Untitled
- Artist: Robert Gober
- Date: 2002
- Medium: Lithograph on paper
- Dimensions: unconfirmed: 1300 × 910 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Untitled” by Robert Gober, a 2002 lithograph on paper that layers a few everyday objects into one strange, dream‑like scene. At the top you see the tops of a pair of leather lace‑up shoes, looking down onto a pile of fallen leaves, with a little sachet of mayonnaise in the middle—little details that feel oddly intimate. Below that, the print shifts into an interior space, with walls, a barred window, and even a high, barred opening, all overlaid with bare tree branches that make the scene feel like a memory in motion.
The door in the bottom right is a direct reference to a cellar door his father built in their family home. Gober has told us those shoes were the only style he’d worn for twenty years, all his life events packed into those laces until he realized they were discontinued right before his United States Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. By printing them, he memorialised a simple habit that suddenly became impossible to replace.
This piece is the 51st in an edition of 65, published by Gemini G.E.L., and was given as part of the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift in 2023.
See it in person
Untitled is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
