Spring 2017 Hudson Showroom

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), the Dormouse says to Alice, “They were learning to draw…and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness — you know you say things are “much of a muchness” — did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?”

“Muchness” is a Shakespearian-sounding word that is predominantly used in contemporary English within the phrasing: ‘much of a muchness.’ In composing this exhibition, I selected three artists whose work plays uniquely off of the internal paradox of the phrase. To utter “much of muchness,” suggests that something is ‘very similar’ or ‘just about the same.’ But “muchness” is also something that is of great physical magnitude.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.