“The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (detail)” is a conceptual artwork created by Martha Rosler between 1974 and 1975. The artwork combines photographs and textual elements, belonging to the genre of photo installations. It exemplifies the conceptual art movement, emphasizing the idea or concept behind the work over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.
The artwork depicts a juxtaposition between a black-and-white photograph of a First National City Bank’s exterior, showing a desolate urban setting, and a simple white sheet listing words such as “plastered,” “stuccoed,” “rosined,” “shellacked,” “vulcanized,” “inebriated,” and “polluted.” This combination of visual and textual components serves to critique the inadequacies of language and imagery in fully conveying social realities, thus questioning the reliability and limits of descriptive systems.
