Nº6092 was an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada for the Sobey Art Prize that queried the controversy of the double agent Sir Anthony Blunt and his sale of a questionable Poussin painting to the Gallery.
Pieced together from factual fragments and furtive fictions, Nº6092 presents the evidence to investigate the double agent Sir Anthony Blunt and the controversial painting “Augustus and Cleopatra” that was–and then wasn’t–painted by Nicolas Poussin. In addition to his intelligence operations, Blunt was royal curator for Buckingham Palace, Director of the Courtauld Institute, and editor of the Warburg Journal. Not unlike Blunt’s own secret personality, the function of a ‘Poussin’ was authored during the 20th century in a cloud of controversy and entwined with the persona of Blunt. At the nexus of this controversy one could investigate a double Anthony: one in the narrative of the painting and one in the narrative surrounding the painting. Using a combination of curatorial strategies and artistic interventions, the exhibition one the one hand displayed historic forensic x-rays along with Courbet and Moore paintings and on the other repurposed historic objects as ready-mades. Ranging in dates from the early 1600's to the 21st century, a history of the connoisseurship and the pictorial is mapped from oil painting to powerpoints. - Download the Catalogue for No6092. - Read the Sobey Art Prize essay by Barabara Fischer. - Download a PDF Portfolio of the entire project, with documentation and critical apparatus.