Christian Marclay’s Sidewalk Animations

Some works of art are like symphonies: methodically orchestrated and years in the making, with the potential to be labelled a masterpiece. The artist and d.j. Christian Marclay is best known for his instant classic “The Clock” (2010), a twenty-four-hour epic collage of hundreds and hundreds of film clips, in which each minute onscreen corresponds to a minute in real time. (Eleven hours and thirty-seven minutes into the piece, Peter Fonda tosses his wristwatch in “Easy Rider”; the dial reads 11:37.) When the piece débuted, at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, in 2011, more than eleven thousand people lined up to see it during its month-long run. It went on to garner Marclay a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale and now graces the collections of several major museums.