The Clock is an art installation by video artist Christian Marclay (born 1955). It is in effect a clock, but it is made of a 24-hour montage of thousands of time-related scenes from movies and some TV shows, meticulously edited to be shown in “real time”: each scene contains an indication of time (for instance, a timepiece, or a piece of dialogue) that is synchronized to show the actual time. The Clock debuted at London's White Cube gallery in 2010.
The Clock has been sold to several art museums, at $500,000 a copy.
The Clock has been described as “addictive” and “mesmerizing”. The Guardian called it “a masterpiece of our times”.[1] In The New York Review of Books, Zadie Smith stated that The Clock “is neither bad nor good, but sublime, maybe the greatest film you have ever seen, and you will need to come back in the morning, in the evening, and late at night, abandoning everything else, packing a sleeping bag, and decamping to the Paula Cooper Gallery until sunrise”.[2] Newsweek named Marclay one of the ten most important artists of today.[3]
At the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marclay was recognized as the best artist in the official exhibition, winning the Golden Lion for The Clock. Accepting the Golden Lion, Marclay invoked Andy Warhol, thanking the jury "for giving The Clock its fifteen minutes".[4]
Some text for this article was copied from article Christian Marclay.