Carrie Walter Stettheimer created a two story dollhouse with over twelve rooms. It took her from 1916 to 1935 to complete this piece: a total of 19 years! I saw this work of art at the Museum of the City of New York, and I was amazed at the intricacies of every room. The bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, and even the bathrooms had so much detail etched in. The dollhouse even had a work of art etched into this work of art. A miniature copy of Duchamp’s painting, Nude Descending the Staircase, was hidden in one of the rooms. I couldn’t imagine all the painstaking hours Stettheimer spent over those 19 years etching in these small details, but I can try to imagine why she did it.
When Stettheimer’s mother died in 1935, she left the project and some of the rooms unfinished. No one except herself compelled her to do this dollhouse. The creation of a work of art is a deeply cathartic process for the artist. Creating art does something to its creator; it makes him/her stronger in a sense. It helps him/her unearth the inner feelings and put them on display. This dollhouse shows all of Carrie Stettheimer’s inner feelings: her desire for perfection and detail and her love for dainty, beautiful things.
To compare with something from our course, creating an artwork is sort of like being an archivist, except the artist’s job is the discover the antiques of the self (past feelings or memories), find their origins, and then polish them enough to put them on display. Gino Francesconi told us that once he began archiving things, he couldn’t stop. And when he gave us that tour, he seemed deeply in love with the art.
I can venture a guess that Stettheimer was doing a similar thing. She was so in love with polishing and creating that she couldn’t stop on the first story, went on to the second story, and kept working for 19 years. Only after a profound emotional event, did she stop her progress, not wanting to dig into herself and explore the pain that she had just felt.
C.S. Lewis once sad that, “I was with book as mother was with child.” Sometimes, we don’t want to stop working on our artworks, because they become like children to us. Every time I finish writing a story or an essay, I feel a sense of relief, but not without a pang of profound sadness. I ask myself, “What am I supposed to do now that my child is all grown up?” I usually explore my soul again and try to dig up more feelings that need archiving.
Artist: Carrie Stettheimer
Title: The Stettheimer Dollhouse
Date of Work: 1916 – 1935
Materials/Medium: wood, ink, metal, and a lot more
Duration: Indefinite
Genre: Dollhouse
Venue: Museum of the City of New York
Friends? I was alone.
