Soliloquy III, 1998. C-print, 83 1/16 x 101 3/16 inches. Edition 4/6. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Partial and promised gift, David Teiger. 2000.105 SAM TAYLOR-WOOD Sam Taylor-Wood's video installations and photographs depict human dramas and isolated emotional instances, such as a quarreling couple and tense social gatherings—people in solitary, awkward, or vulnerable moments. These psychologically charged narratives are often presented on a grand scale, in room-encompassing video projections or 360-degree photographic panoramas accompanied by sound tracks. In her Soliloquy series (1998–99), Taylor-Wood's cinematic sensibility is coupled with strong references to the history of painting. The photographs are structured like Renaissance altarpieces and predellas (the iconographically related panels attached below altarpieces), and make specific art-historical references. In Soliloquy I (1998), for example, the languid pose of the sleeping man recalls that of the dying poet depicted in Henry Wallis's The Death of Chatterton (1865), and in Soliloquy III (1998), the reclining nude woman mimics Velázquez's Rokeby Venus (1650). The title of the series is derived from the name of the theatrical monologue during which an actor disrupts the narrative to directly address the audience. And that state of deliberate disengagement is implied by the dual images comprising each work: the larger photo represents the conscious state of the subject, while the register below provides a filmic tableau of his or her subconscious fantasies.