The History, Politics, and Ethics of Time
HISTORY 328, GERMAN 365
School of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Faculty member: Helmut Puff (History, German)
Sonia Sheridan
Self-Portrait in Time
digital print on paper
30 1/16 in. x 39 15/16 in. ( 76.3 cm x 101.5 cm )
Gift of Professor Diane M. Kirkpatrick
Time grounds our lives, and yet it often escapes notice. “The History, Politics, and Ethics of Time” asks students to consider the history, politics, and ethics of notions of time to gain a richer understanding of how our conceptions of it shape who we are. Art is able to represent the many ways people have experienced and understood time, and here it plays a central role in the students’ exploration of what time is and has been.
Featuring works of art that employ various forms of visual narration, the installation takes up a number of questions that illuminate how varied our experiences of time are. What is a moment, how long is it, and how do sequences of moments become assembled into stories? What does waiting tell us about time? How do artists visually represent things like the past and the future or memory and forgetting? Together, these works of art have us imagine temporality as multiple and help us understand that our perceptions of it are always anchored in our experience of time in the present.
Works included in this collection
Accession Number
1971/2.56
Title
The Four Times of Day: Morning
Artist(s)
William Hogarth
Object Creation Date
1738
Medium & Support
etching and engraving on laid paper
Dimensions
18 1/4 in. x 15 5/8 in. ( 46.4 cm x 39.7 cm )
Credit Line
Museum Purchase
Label copy
[Hogarth intro label]
Hogarth created several series of images, such as The Rake’s Progress and Marriage à la Mode, satirizing the mores and values of eighteenth-century England. In The Four Times of Day—a series of prints made after his paintings and intended for a wider audience—Hogarth employed humor both to comment on contemporary society and to breathe new life into the genre of images that marks the progression of time by depicting the seasons, the stages of life, or the times of day.
Turning a long tradition on its head, Hogarth’s portrayals of the times of day (morning, noon, evening, and night) are situated in specific locations in contemporary London rather than an in idealized classical past. Each of the sites he chose was considered disreputable in its day and the congested settings act as foils and contexts for the figures. In this way the pastoral, eternal, and ideal images of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses so often encountered in traditional paintings in this genre become urban, specific, and comic. In addition to creating a specifically English kind of imagery, Hogarth disrupts the tradition linking the times of day with particular seasons, i.e. morning with spring, midday with summer, evening with fall, and night with winter. Instead his cycle begins with winter, which he links to morning, and ends with autumn, which he links to night.
William Hogarth
England, 1697–1764
The Four Times of Day: Morning
1738
Etching and engraving
Museum purchase, 1971/2.56
Here the traditional figure of dawn, Aurora, is replaced by a thin woman seen in profile crossing a square in Covent Garden, a formerly aristocratic part of London that by the eighteenth century housed a fruit and vegetable market as well as taverns, theatres, and brothels. The scene is peopled with prostitutes, and the infamous tavern Tom King’s Coffee House, with a group of revelers in the doorway, eclipses the church of St. Paul. Though morning is usually linked with spring and the idea of new life, this scene is set in winter, which is indicated by the snow on the rooftops and people warming their hands over a fire.
Gallery Rotation Winter 2011
William Hogarth
England, 1697–1764
The Four Times of Day: Morning
1738
Etching and engraving
Museum purchase, 1971/2.56
Here the traditional figure of dawn, Aurora, is replaced by a thin woman seen in profile crossing a square in Covent Garden, a formerly aristocratic part of London that by the eighteenth century housed a fruit and vegetable market as well as taverns, theatres, and brothels. The scene is peopled with prostitutes, and the infamous tavern Tom King’s Coffee House, with a group of revelers in the doorway, eclipses the church of St. Paul. Though morning is usually linked with spring and the idea of new life, this scene is set in winter, which is indicated by the snow on the rooftops and people warming their hands over a fire.
Subject matter
Hogarth created several print series that satirize mores and values of 18th century England. In his suite, "The Four Times of Day," executed after a series of paintings, he employed humor, not just to comment on London society but to breathe new life into images marking the times of day. Hogarth translated portrayals of the times of the day from their pastoral origins to that of contemporary London. The pastoral, eternal and ideal here become urban, specific and comic. Each of the London sites shown in this series was considered disreputable in its day and the congested setting acts as a foil and context for the figures.
Morning- Set in Covent Garden, the traditional figure of dawn, Aurora, is replaced by a thin woman seen in profile. Rather than a springtime embodying new life, this scene is set in winter. Hogarth peoples his print with prostitutes and a darkened sky; Tom King’s Coffee House, a tavern with an infamous reputation, eclipses the church of St. Paul seen at right.
Physical Description
This print is vertically oriented with gray markings. A cream border surrounds it and it has “MORNING” written below it. The lower half of the print has a busy square. There is a pyramid of people to the right, with lovers, beggars, and a woman warming her hands over a fire. The left has a woman in a gown and a small boy behind her. Beyond them in the distance is a large mass of people carrying posters. The upper half shows the tops of the buildings that line the square. The rooftops has a dusting of snow, and the clouds are dark as if it were an early winter morning.
Primary Object Classification
Print
Primary Object Type
intaglio print
Additional Object Classification(s)
Print
Collection Area
Western
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
1971/2.56
Title
The Four Times of Day: Morning
Artist(s)
William Hogarth
Object Creation Date
1738
Medium & Support
etching and engraving on laid paper
Dimensions
18 1/4 in. x 15 5/8 in. ( 46.4 cm x 39.7 cm )
Credit Line
Museum Purchase
Label copy
[Hogarth intro label]
Hogarth created several series of images, such as The Rake’s Progress and Marriage à la Mode, satirizing the mores and values of eighteenth-century England. In The Four Times of Day—a series of prints made after his paintings and intended for a wider audience—Hogarth employed humor both to comment on contemporary society and to breathe new life into the genre of images that marks the progression of time by depicting the seasons, the stages of life, or the times of day.
Turning a long tradition on its head, Hogarth’s portrayals of the times of day (morning, noon, evening, and night) are situated in specific locations in contemporary London rather than an in idealized classical past. Each of the sites he chose was considered disreputable in its day and the congested settings act as foils and contexts for the figures. In this way the pastoral, eternal, and ideal images of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses so often encountered in traditional paintings in this genre become urban, specific, and comic. In addition to creating a specifically English kind of imagery, Hogarth disrupts the tradition linking the times of day with particular seasons, i.e. morning with spring, midday with summer, evening with fall, and night with winter. Instead his cycle begins with winter, which he links to morning, and ends with autumn, which he links to night.
William Hogarth
England, 1697–1764
The Four Times of Day: Morning
1738
Etching and engraving
Museum purchase, 1971/2.56
Here the traditional figure of dawn, Aurora, is replaced by a thin woman seen in profile crossing a square in Covent Garden, a formerly aristocratic part of London that by the eighteenth century housed a fruit and vegetable market as well as taverns, theatres, and brothels. The scene is peopled with prostitutes, and the infamous tavern Tom King’s Coffee House, with a group of revelers in the doorway, eclipses the church of St. Paul. Though morning is usually linked with spring and the idea of new life, this scene is set in winter, which is indicated by the snow on the rooftops and people warming their hands over a fire.
Gallery Rotation Winter 2011
William Hogarth
England, 1697–1764
The Four Times of Day: Morning
1738
Etching and engraving
Museum purchase, 1971/2.56
Here the traditional figure of dawn, Aurora, is replaced by a thin woman seen in profile crossing a square in Covent Garden, a formerly aristocratic part of London that by the eighteenth century housed a fruit and vegetable market as well as taverns, theatres, and brothels. The scene is peopled with prostitutes, and the infamous tavern Tom King’s Coffee House, with a group of revelers in the doorway, eclipses the church of St. Paul. Though morning is usually linked with spring and the idea of new life, this scene is set in winter, which is indicated by the snow on the rooftops and people warming their hands over a fire.
Subject matter
Hogarth created several print series that satirize mores and values of 18th century England. In his suite, "The Four Times of Day," executed after a series of paintings, he employed humor, not just to comment on London society but to breathe new life into images marking the times of day. Hogarth translated portrayals of the times of the day from their pastoral origins to that of contemporary London. The pastoral, eternal and ideal here become urban, specific and comic. Each of the London sites shown in this series was considered disreputable in its day and the congested setting acts as a foil and context for the figures.
Morning- Set in Covent Garden, the traditional figure of dawn, Aurora, is replaced by a thin woman seen in profile. Rather than a springtime embodying new life, this scene is set in winter. Hogarth peoples his print with prostitutes and a darkened sky; Tom King’s Coffee House, a tavern with an infamous reputation, eclipses the church of St. Paul seen at right.
Physical Description
This print is vertically oriented with gray markings. A cream border surrounds it and it has “MORNING” written below it. The lower half of the print has a busy square. There is a pyramid of people to the right, with lovers, beggars, and a woman warming her hands over a fire. The left has a woman in a gown and a small boy behind her. Beyond them in the distance is a large mass of people carrying posters. The upper half shows the tops of the buildings that line the square. The rooftops has a dusting of snow, and the clouds are dark as if it were an early winter morning.
Primary Object Classification
Primary Object Type
intaglio print
Additional Object Classification(s)
Collection Area
Western
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
William Hogarth
The Four Times of Day: Morning
etching and engraving on laid paper
18 1/4 in. x 15 5/8 in. ( 46.4 cm x 39.7 cm )
Museum Purchase
The Four Times of Day: Morning
etching and engraving on laid paper
18 1/4 in. x 15 5/8 in. ( 46.4 cm x 39.7 cm )
Museum Purchase
Accession Number
2008/1.152.59
Title
And still they don't go! (Y aun no se van!)
Artist(s)
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Object Creation Date
1799
Medium & Support
etching, burnished aquatint and burin on paper
Dimensions
12 in x 8 in (30.48 cm x 20.32 cm);8 1/4 in x 5 3/16 in (20.96 cm x 13.18 cm);8 1/2 in x 5 7/8 in (21.59 cm x 14.92 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Kurt Delbanco in honor of Nicholas Delbanco, and partial purchase with the funds from the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund
Label copy
Plate 59
And still they don’t go!
(Y aun no se van!)
Etching, burnished aquatint, and burin
Gift of Kurt Delbanco in honor of Nicholas Delbanco, and partial purchase with funds from the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, 2008/1.152.59
Commentary: He who does not reflect on the inconstancy of fortune sleeps peacefully while surrounded by dangers; he does not know how to avoid the danger which threatens him, and there is no misfortune which does not surprise him.
Primary Object Classification
Print
Primary Object Type
intaglio print
Collection Area
Western
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
2008/1.152.59
Title
And still they don't go! (Y aun no se van!)
Artist(s)
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Object Creation Date
1799
Medium & Support
etching, burnished aquatint and burin on paper
Dimensions
12 in x 8 in (30.48 cm x 20.32 cm);8 1/4 in x 5 3/16 in (20.96 cm x 13.18 cm);8 1/2 in x 5 7/8 in (21.59 cm x 14.92 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Kurt Delbanco in honor of Nicholas Delbanco, and partial purchase with the funds from the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund
Label copy
Plate 59
And still they don’t go!
(Y aun no se van!)
Etching, burnished aquatint, and burin
Gift of Kurt Delbanco in honor of Nicholas Delbanco, and partial purchase with funds from the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, 2008/1.152.59
Commentary: He who does not reflect on the inconstancy of fortune sleeps peacefully while surrounded by dangers; he does not know how to avoid the danger which threatens him, and there is no misfortune which does not surprise him.
Primary Object Classification
Primary Object Type
intaglio print
Collection Area
Western
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
And still they don't go! (Y aun no se van!)
etching, burnished aquatint and burin on paper
12 in x 8 in (30.48 cm x 20.32 cm);8 1/4 in x 5 3/16 in (20.96 cm x 13.18 cm);8 1/2 in x 5 7/8 in (21.59 cm x 14.92 cm)
Gift of Kurt Delbanco in honor of Nicholas Delbanco, and partial purchase with the funds from the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund
And still they don't go! (Y aun no se van!)
etching, burnished aquatint and burin on paper
12 in x 8 in (30.48 cm x 20.32 cm);8 1/4 in x 5 3/16 in (20.96 cm x 13.18 cm);8 1/2 in x 5 7/8 in (21.59 cm x 14.92 cm)
Gift of Kurt Delbanco in honor of Nicholas Delbanco, and partial purchase with the funds from the W. Hawkins Ferry Fund
Accession Number
1992/1.132
Title
Martha Graham—Lamentation
Artist(s)
Barbara Morgan
Artist Nationality
American (North American)
Object Creation Date
1935
Medium & Support
gelatin silver print on paper
Dimensions
15 7/8 in x 19 7/8 in (40.3 cm x 50.5 cm);22 3/16 in x 28 1/4 in (56.36 cm x 71.76 cm);15 15/16 in x 19 15/16 in (40.5 cm x 50.7 cm);13 9/16 in x 18 in (34.5 cm x 45.7 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Frances U. and Scott K. Simonds
Subject matter
Barbara Morgan moved from California to New York City in 1930. She began photographing Martha Graham in 1935 after seeing her perform, immediately introducing herself and beginning a collaboration. Morgan photographed Graham and her company in her studio, giving her more control over the images she produced. Themes in her work included dance, capturing gesture, and depicting crucial moments in sequences of movement. This photograph combines two negatives to form a composite print. The photographs are from Martha Graham's performance of Lamentation, a modern dance choreographed to Zoltán Kodály's 1910 Piano Piece, Op. 3, No. 2.
Physical Description
A composite print from two negatives, each representing a moment from a dance performance. The woman wears a large cloth, which she manipulates with her motions to create forms and shapes.
Primary Object Classification
Photograph
Collection Area
Photography
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
1992/1.132
Title
Martha Graham—Lamentation
Artist(s)
Barbara Morgan
Artist Nationality
American (North American)
Object Creation Date
1935
Medium & Support
gelatin silver print on paper
Dimensions
15 7/8 in x 19 7/8 in (40.3 cm x 50.5 cm);22 3/16 in x 28 1/4 in (56.36 cm x 71.76 cm);15 15/16 in x 19 15/16 in (40.5 cm x 50.7 cm);13 9/16 in x 18 in (34.5 cm x 45.7 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Frances U. and Scott K. Simonds
Subject matter
Barbara Morgan moved from California to New York City in 1930. She began photographing Martha Graham in 1935 after seeing her perform, immediately introducing herself and beginning a collaboration. Morgan photographed Graham and her company in her studio, giving her more control over the images she produced. Themes in her work included dance, capturing gesture, and depicting crucial moments in sequences of movement. This photograph combines two negatives to form a composite print. The photographs are from Martha Graham's performance of Lamentation, a modern dance choreographed to Zoltán Kodály's 1910 Piano Piece, Op. 3, No. 2.
Physical Description
A composite print from two negatives, each representing a moment from a dance performance. The woman wears a large cloth, which she manipulates with her motions to create forms and shapes.
Primary Object Classification
Photograph
Collection Area
Photography
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham—Lamentation
gelatin silver print on paper
15 7/8 in x 19 7/8 in (40.3 cm x 50.5 cm);22 3/16 in x 28 1/4 in (56.36 cm x 71.76 cm);15 15/16 in x 19 15/16 in (40.5 cm x 50.7 cm);13 9/16 in x 18 in (34.5 cm x 45.7 cm)
Gift of Frances U. and Scott K. Simonds
Martha Graham—Lamentation
gelatin silver print on paper
15 7/8 in x 19 7/8 in (40.3 cm x 50.5 cm);22 3/16 in x 28 1/4 in (56.36 cm x 71.76 cm);15 15/16 in x 19 15/16 in (40.5 cm x 50.7 cm);13 9/16 in x 18 in (34.5 cm x 45.7 cm)
Gift of Frances U. and Scott K. Simonds
Accession Number
2000/2.15
Title
Self-Portrait in Time
Artist(s)
Sonia Sheridan
Object Creation Date
1989
Medium & Support
digital print on paper
Dimensions
30 1/16 in. x 39 15/16 in. ( 76.3 cm x 101.5 cm )
Credit Line
Gift of Professor Diane M. Kirkpatrick
Label copy
Flip Your Field – Photography from the Collection
Intro Wall Text
The photographs presented here, in two contrasting displays, were selected from the UMMA’s vast holdings. They present the viewer with an opportunity to see two distinctly different approaches to the art of the photograph. On this wall is a set of relatively straightforward, yet incredibly diverse, representations of the same subject. Here, photographic technique presumes the truth of the image. The display on the perpendicular wall is a selection of photographic works pushed by the artists in a variety of creative directions. Inventive and expressive in nature, they illuminate the intervention of artistic vision into the photographic process.
As an artist I was struck by the breadth and size of UMMA’s remarkable collection—every theme that has interested artists over time is represented. As I looked through the many photographs, my instinct was to group together images of trees, a subject close to our immediate environment and related to my own work. Collecting photographs of trees was never an intentional strategy of the museum. The large number of such images among its extensive holdings is rather the result of the abiding interest of photographers in the subject, evidenced throughout the history of the medium.
As a grouping, these photographs demonstrate what the medium has from its beginning done so well—captured the “fact” of a place or event or thing. Yet within this one subject, the range of imagery is quite broad. The tight arrangement here allows us to see the subject as a whole, while also inviting us to compare the artists’ individual visions. For example, compare the gnarled tree trunk in the Ansel Adams image to the simplicity of the single tree on a beach in the photograph by Elliott Erwitt.
Juxtaposed to the tree arrangement is the adjacent wall with very different photographic images, carefully spaced and arranged in a more conventional manner. These are images derived through artistic innovation, and in some cases traditional photography is only part of the picture—other technical strategies are also at play. These photographs are expressive of each individual artist’s point of view, often taking photographic techniques in new and experimental directions. Most were completed in the darkroom and studio before the ease of digital manipulation so prevalent today. Consider, for instance, Blythe Bohnen’s self-portrait, a photograph capturing motion and intentional blurring of the focus, and contrast it with Lesley Dill’s “White Poem Figure (The Soul Has Moments of Escape),” an image that challenges the notion of what constitutes a photograph.
With the abundance of cell phone cameras, the photograph has become even more a part of our lives. The ease with which we can capture “real life” images, and at the same time manipulate those images digitally, means that the creative work of photographers in the past is, in a sense, now embedded in our everyday experience. Together, the two distinct installations that constitute this exhibition recall the purity of the traditional photograph while also presenting works in which creative experimentation has expanded the boundaries of the medium.
Larry Cressman
Guest Curator
Professor of Art,Residential College and Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design
The UMMA Flip Your Field series asks noted University of Michigan faculty members to consider artwork outside their field of specialization in order to guest curate an exhibition using works from UMMA's renowned collection. The UMMA Flip Your Field series is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Sonia Sheridan
United States, born 1925
Self-Portrait in Time
1989
Digital print on paper
Gift of Professor Diane M. Kirkpatrick, 2000/2.15
Primary Object Classification
Photograph
Collection Area
Photography
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
2000/2.15
Title
Self-Portrait in Time
Artist(s)
Sonia Sheridan
Object Creation Date
1989
Medium & Support
digital print on paper
Dimensions
30 1/16 in. x 39 15/16 in. ( 76.3 cm x 101.5 cm )
Credit Line
Gift of Professor Diane M. Kirkpatrick
Label copy
Flip Your Field – Photography from the Collection
Intro Wall Text
The photographs presented here, in two contrasting displays, were selected from the UMMA’s vast holdings. They present the viewer with an opportunity to see two distinctly different approaches to the art of the photograph. On this wall is a set of relatively straightforward, yet incredibly diverse, representations of the same subject. Here, photographic technique presumes the truth of the image. The display on the perpendicular wall is a selection of photographic works pushed by the artists in a variety of creative directions. Inventive and expressive in nature, they illuminate the intervention of artistic vision into the photographic process.
As an artist I was struck by the breadth and size of UMMA’s remarkable collection—every theme that has interested artists over time is represented. As I looked through the many photographs, my instinct was to group together images of trees, a subject close to our immediate environment and related to my own work. Collecting photographs of trees was never an intentional strategy of the museum. The large number of such images among its extensive holdings is rather the result of the abiding interest of photographers in the subject, evidenced throughout the history of the medium.
As a grouping, these photographs demonstrate what the medium has from its beginning done so well—captured the “fact” of a place or event or thing. Yet within this one subject, the range of imagery is quite broad. The tight arrangement here allows us to see the subject as a whole, while also inviting us to compare the artists’ individual visions. For example, compare the gnarled tree trunk in the Ansel Adams image to the simplicity of the single tree on a beach in the photograph by Elliott Erwitt.
Juxtaposed to the tree arrangement is the adjacent wall with very different photographic images, carefully spaced and arranged in a more conventional manner. These are images derived through artistic innovation, and in some cases traditional photography is only part of the picture—other technical strategies are also at play. These photographs are expressive of each individual artist’s point of view, often taking photographic techniques in new and experimental directions. Most were completed in the darkroom and studio before the ease of digital manipulation so prevalent today. Consider, for instance, Blythe Bohnen’s self-portrait, a photograph capturing motion and intentional blurring of the focus, and contrast it with Lesley Dill’s “White Poem Figure (The Soul Has Moments of Escape),” an image that challenges the notion of what constitutes a photograph.
With the abundance of cell phone cameras, the photograph has become even more a part of our lives. The ease with which we can capture “real life” images, and at the same time manipulate those images digitally, means that the creative work of photographers in the past is, in a sense, now embedded in our everyday experience. Together, the two distinct installations that constitute this exhibition recall the purity of the traditional photograph while also presenting works in which creative experimentation has expanded the boundaries of the medium.
Larry Cressman
Guest Curator
Professor of Art,Residential College and Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design
The UMMA Flip Your Field series asks noted University of Michigan faculty members to consider artwork outside their field of specialization in order to guest curate an exhibition using works from UMMA's renowned collection. The UMMA Flip Your Field series is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Sonia Sheridan
United States, born 1925
Self-Portrait in Time
1989
Digital print on paper
Gift of Professor Diane M. Kirkpatrick, 2000/2.15
Primary Object Classification
Photograph
Collection Area
Photography
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
Sonia Sheridan
Self-Portrait in Time
digital print on paper
30 1/16 in. x 39 15/16 in. ( 76.3 cm x 101.5 cm )
Gift of Professor Diane M. Kirkpatrick
Self-Portrait in Time
digital print on paper
30 1/16 in. x 39 15/16 in. ( 76.3 cm x 101.5 cm )
Gift of Professor Diane M. Kirkpatrick
Accession Number
1986/1.194.5
Title
Birmingham Race Riot
Artist(s)
Andy Warhol
Artist Nationality
American (North American)
Object Creation Date
1964
Medium & Support
screenprint on paper
Dimensions
20 1/16 in x 24 1/16 in (50.96 cm x 61.12 cm);26 1/8 in x 32 1/16 in (66.36 cm x 81.44 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
Label copy
In the early 1960s Andy Warhol turned to themes of grisly catastrophe culled from newspapers and magazines, beginning with the painting "129 Die in Jet (Plane Crash)" taken from the cover of the June 4, 1962 "New York Mirror." In 1963 he began in earnest to focus on images of conflict and death in works that have collectively come to be known as his Disaster Series. Although Warhol never avowed any political connections, several works in this body of images evidence a strong reaction to social and political issues of the times form civil rights to the death penalty.
In contrast to his works on canvas, which often incorporated repeated images, Warhol typically depicted only a single photogrpahic image in his early works on paper, isolating and compounding the tension between the artwork and its media source. The single image is starker and more confrontational than the decorative, often numbing effects created by repetition. Also, as in most of his early prints, Warhol used black ink against white paper, again recalling its photogrpahic source, whereas color plays a critical role in the expressive qualities of painted versions.
For the "Race Riot" imges, Warhol made screens form three photographs he found in a 1963 "Life" magazine series by Charles Moore showing the brutal police confrontation with protesters during the Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights riots.1 In 1963 and 1964, Warhol based several paintings and a series of unique images on paper on these photographs, as he had done with the "Cagney" and "Suicide" in 1962.2 For the editioned print in 1964, titled "Birmingham Race Riot," he reversed and cropped one of the photographs, focusing on a central detail. This close-up ironically makes the crowded scene more difficult to decipher as figures are abruptly cut off. The truncated image engenders a narrative, cinematic impulse as the viewer expects the image to be completed in the next frame.3 The high-contrast black-and-white contributes to an optically dizzying effect, and the off-register printing exaggerates the illegibility, adding an urgent, frantic dynamic.
Warhol's artful manipulation of this photojournalistic image heightens its disturbing, frenzied qualities and offers evidence of Warhol's reaction to an issue of civil strife that came to define the 1960s in America. The work's printer, George Townsend of Sirocco Screenprinters, clearly remembers Warhol's intent with this image. Warhol called this eposide a "blot on the American conscience" and asked Townsend for a muddier printing.4
1. The photographs appeared in the May 17, 1963 issue. The segregationist police commissioner Bull Conner unleashed attack dogs and fire hoses on a nonviolent demonstartion by school-children and freedom fighters led by Martin Luther King, Jr. The Birmingham policce clubbed the crowd in front of television adn newspaper cameras.
2. For works on canvas see "Red Race Riot" and "Mustard Race Riot," 1963, and "Little Race Riot," 1964.
3. Warhol's cropping in "Cagney" achieves very different effects. See p. 41 [of "Pop Impressions Europe/USA].
4. Townsend, conversation with the author, August 1998.
--from Wendy Weitman, "Pop Impressions Europe/USA: Prints and Multiples from the Museum of Modern Art," 1999, distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, p. 90.
-------------------------
6/28/10
Andy Warhol (United States, 1928–1987)
Birmingham Race Riot
1964
Screenprint on paper
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
In the early 1960s Andy Warhol produced a series of works based on scenes of death and disaster culled from the pages of newspapers and magazines. Warhol’s works on canvas from this series often involved the serial repetition of the same image. When working on paper, however, Warhol tended to restrict himself to a single photographic image, highlighting the tension between the artwork and its media source.
For his 1963–4 Race Riot series, Warhol worked from three LIFE magazine photographs documenting a brutal police confrontation with protesters during the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama civil rights riots. For this print, he reversed and cropped one of the photographs, focusing on a central detail of police unleashing attack dogs on a protestor. This act of cropping endows the image with a quasi-cinematic effect, as if the action will continue in a subsequent frame. At the same time, Warhol’s high-contrast, off-register printing exaggerates the illegibility of the purportedly documentary image.
Various Artists
Ten Works x Ten Painters
1964
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
George Ortman (born 1926)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.1
Frank Stella (born 1936)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.2
Ellsworth Kelly (born 1923)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.3
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991)
Untitled
Screenprint and collage on paper
1986/1.194.4
Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
Birmingham Race Riot
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.5
Stuart Davis (1894–1964)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.6
Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997)
Sandwich and Soda
Screenprint on mylar
1986/1.194.7
Larry Poons (born 1937)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.8
Robert Indiana (born 1928)
External Hexagon
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.9
Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.10
In the early 1960s there was a widespread printmaking revival in the United States. During this time numerous studios and workshops were established on the East and West Coasts, including Tamarind Workshop, Universal Limited Art Editions, Gemini G.E.L., and Crown Point Press. This revitalization of printmaking coincided with the rise of Pop art and Minimalism, two modern art movements that shared with printmaking an interest in modern technology, reproducibility, and mass production. Further support was generated by newly formed professional organizations and publications devoted solely to the medium and art of printmaking. Galleries and museums began to acquire, exhibit, and commission limited edition prints and print portfolios. One particularly popular strategy was to publish the work of several artists together. Ten Works x Ten Painters is one of the earliest examples of this type of portfolio and is especially notable because it was the first to be published by a museum. Samuel J. Wagstaff, the curator of paintings at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, who commissioned the portfolio, wanted to make work by major American artists accessible to a wider audience and range of collectors. Many of the ten prints express a Pop sensibility, either in subject or color choice, but the selection of artists was still diverse. Each of the prints was based on a painting the artists had previously created, and for Wagstaff, the unifying bond among the prints was their flatness and the ease in which the painting was translated to ink on paper.
All of the works in the portfolio—printed by Norman Ives and Sewell Sillman at Sirocco Screenprints in New Haven, Connecticut—were silkscreen prints on paper with the exception of two: the Lichtenstein, which was printed on mylar, and the Motherwell, which had additional paper collage elements. In both cases, it was the first time the artist had employed these techniques.
(6/28/10)
Subject matter
The Birmingham Riots took place in May of 1963. There are many similar photographs and images from the Civil Rights Era of the confrontation between protestors and police officers who often attacked (often peaceful) protestors with police dogs, weapons, and fire hoses. The images Warhol looked at were from a 1963 "Life" magazine series by Charles Moore. He reversed and cropped one of the photographs for the composition of this print.
This work is one of ten prints published within a portfolio, “Ten Works + Ten Painters”, commissioned by Samuel J. Wagstaff from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in 1964. This portfolio was one of the earliest to have several artists published together to make major American artists accessible to a wider audience and range of collectors. Each print in this portfolio was based on a painting the artists had previously created. Some of the artists represented, in addition to Andy Warhol, are Frank Stella, Robert Motherwell, Ellsworth Kelly and Roy Lichtenstein who were associated with the Pop and Minimalism art movements in the 1960s.
Physical Description
This work shows a black and white photograph of a crowd of people outdoors, with trees in the background. On the left is a uniformed policeman holding a dog on a leash in one hand and a club in the other. In the center area there is a man, with his back to the viewer, who is being attacked by two dogs. One, controlled by another policeman, is ripping his clothing and the other, with teeth bared, is attacking his right hand. In the crowd there are men watching the attack and looking at the policemen.
Primary Object Classification
Print
Primary Object Type
black and white print
Collection Area
Photography
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
1986/1.194.5
Title
Birmingham Race Riot
Artist(s)
Andy Warhol
Artist Nationality
American (North American)
Object Creation Date
1964
Medium & Support
screenprint on paper
Dimensions
20 1/16 in x 24 1/16 in (50.96 cm x 61.12 cm);26 1/8 in x 32 1/16 in (66.36 cm x 81.44 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
Label copy
In the early 1960s Andy Warhol turned to themes of grisly catastrophe culled from newspapers and magazines, beginning with the painting "129 Die in Jet (Plane Crash)" taken from the cover of the June 4, 1962 "New York Mirror." In 1963 he began in earnest to focus on images of conflict and death in works that have collectively come to be known as his Disaster Series. Although Warhol never avowed any political connections, several works in this body of images evidence a strong reaction to social and political issues of the times form civil rights to the death penalty.
In contrast to his works on canvas, which often incorporated repeated images, Warhol typically depicted only a single photogrpahic image in his early works on paper, isolating and compounding the tension between the artwork and its media source. The single image is starker and more confrontational than the decorative, often numbing effects created by repetition. Also, as in most of his early prints, Warhol used black ink against white paper, again recalling its photogrpahic source, whereas color plays a critical role in the expressive qualities of painted versions.
For the "Race Riot" imges, Warhol made screens form three photographs he found in a 1963 "Life" magazine series by Charles Moore showing the brutal police confrontation with protesters during the Birmingham, Alabama, civil rights riots.1 In 1963 and 1964, Warhol based several paintings and a series of unique images on paper on these photographs, as he had done with the "Cagney" and "Suicide" in 1962.2 For the editioned print in 1964, titled "Birmingham Race Riot," he reversed and cropped one of the photographs, focusing on a central detail. This close-up ironically makes the crowded scene more difficult to decipher as figures are abruptly cut off. The truncated image engenders a narrative, cinematic impulse as the viewer expects the image to be completed in the next frame.3 The high-contrast black-and-white contributes to an optically dizzying effect, and the off-register printing exaggerates the illegibility, adding an urgent, frantic dynamic.
Warhol's artful manipulation of this photojournalistic image heightens its disturbing, frenzied qualities and offers evidence of Warhol's reaction to an issue of civil strife that came to define the 1960s in America. The work's printer, George Townsend of Sirocco Screenprinters, clearly remembers Warhol's intent with this image. Warhol called this eposide a "blot on the American conscience" and asked Townsend for a muddier printing.4
1. The photographs appeared in the May 17, 1963 issue. The segregationist police commissioner Bull Conner unleashed attack dogs and fire hoses on a nonviolent demonstartion by school-children and freedom fighters led by Martin Luther King, Jr. The Birmingham policce clubbed the crowd in front of television adn newspaper cameras.
2. For works on canvas see "Red Race Riot" and "Mustard Race Riot," 1963, and "Little Race Riot," 1964.
3. Warhol's cropping in "Cagney" achieves very different effects. See p. 41 [of "Pop Impressions Europe/USA].
4. Townsend, conversation with the author, August 1998.
--from Wendy Weitman, "Pop Impressions Europe/USA: Prints and Multiples from the Museum of Modern Art," 1999, distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, p. 90.
-------------------------
6/28/10
Andy Warhol (United States, 1928–1987)
Birmingham Race Riot
1964
Screenprint on paper
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
In the early 1960s Andy Warhol produced a series of works based on scenes of death and disaster culled from the pages of newspapers and magazines. Warhol’s works on canvas from this series often involved the serial repetition of the same image. When working on paper, however, Warhol tended to restrict himself to a single photographic image, highlighting the tension between the artwork and its media source.
For his 1963–4 Race Riot series, Warhol worked from three LIFE magazine photographs documenting a brutal police confrontation with protesters during the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama civil rights riots. For this print, he reversed and cropped one of the photographs, focusing on a central detail of police unleashing attack dogs on a protestor. This act of cropping endows the image with a quasi-cinematic effect, as if the action will continue in a subsequent frame. At the same time, Warhol’s high-contrast, off-register printing exaggerates the illegibility of the purportedly documentary image.
Various Artists
Ten Works x Ten Painters
1964
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
George Ortman (born 1926)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.1
Frank Stella (born 1936)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.2
Ellsworth Kelly (born 1923)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.3
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991)
Untitled
Screenprint and collage on paper
1986/1.194.4
Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
Birmingham Race Riot
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.5
Stuart Davis (1894–1964)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.6
Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997)
Sandwich and Soda
Screenprint on mylar
1986/1.194.7
Larry Poons (born 1937)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.8
Robert Indiana (born 1928)
External Hexagon
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.9
Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967)
Untitled
Screenprint on paper
1986/1.194.10
In the early 1960s there was a widespread printmaking revival in the United States. During this time numerous studios and workshops were established on the East and West Coasts, including Tamarind Workshop, Universal Limited Art Editions, Gemini G.E.L., and Crown Point Press. This revitalization of printmaking coincided with the rise of Pop art and Minimalism, two modern art movements that shared with printmaking an interest in modern technology, reproducibility, and mass production. Further support was generated by newly formed professional organizations and publications devoted solely to the medium and art of printmaking. Galleries and museums began to acquire, exhibit, and commission limited edition prints and print portfolios. One particularly popular strategy was to publish the work of several artists together. Ten Works x Ten Painters is one of the earliest examples of this type of portfolio and is especially notable because it was the first to be published by a museum. Samuel J. Wagstaff, the curator of paintings at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, who commissioned the portfolio, wanted to make work by major American artists accessible to a wider audience and range of collectors. Many of the ten prints express a Pop sensibility, either in subject or color choice, but the selection of artists was still diverse. Each of the prints was based on a painting the artists had previously created, and for Wagstaff, the unifying bond among the prints was their flatness and the ease in which the painting was translated to ink on paper.
All of the works in the portfolio—printed by Norman Ives and Sewell Sillman at Sirocco Screenprints in New Haven, Connecticut—were silkscreen prints on paper with the exception of two: the Lichtenstein, which was printed on mylar, and the Motherwell, which had additional paper collage elements. In both cases, it was the first time the artist had employed these techniques.
(6/28/10)
Subject matter
The Birmingham Riots took place in May of 1963. There are many similar photographs and images from the Civil Rights Era of the confrontation between protestors and police officers who often attacked (often peaceful) protestors with police dogs, weapons, and fire hoses. The images Warhol looked at were from a 1963 "Life" magazine series by Charles Moore. He reversed and cropped one of the photographs for the composition of this print.
This work is one of ten prints published within a portfolio, “Ten Works + Ten Painters”, commissioned by Samuel J. Wagstaff from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in 1964. This portfolio was one of the earliest to have several artists published together to make major American artists accessible to a wider audience and range of collectors. Each print in this portfolio was based on a painting the artists had previously created. Some of the artists represented, in addition to Andy Warhol, are Frank Stella, Robert Motherwell, Ellsworth Kelly and Roy Lichtenstein who were associated with the Pop and Minimalism art movements in the 1960s.
Physical Description
This work shows a black and white photograph of a crowd of people outdoors, with trees in the background. On the left is a uniformed policeman holding a dog on a leash in one hand and a club in the other. In the center area there is a man, with his back to the viewer, who is being attacked by two dogs. One, controlled by another policeman, is ripping his clothing and the other, with teeth bared, is attacking his right hand. In the crowd there are men watching the attack and looking at the policemen.
Primary Object Classification
Primary Object Type
black and white print
Collection Area
Photography
Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.
Andy Warhol
Birmingham Race Riot
screenprint on paper
20 1/16 in x 24 1/16 in (50.96 cm x 61.12 cm);26 1/8 in x 32 1/16 in (66.36 cm x 81.44 cm)
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
Birmingham Race Riot
screenprint on paper
20 1/16 in x 24 1/16 in (50.96 cm x 61.12 cm);26 1/8 in x 32 1/16 in (66.36 cm x 81.44 cm)
Gift of Graham and Marianne Smith
Exhibition Support
Lead support for this exhibition is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Erica Gervais Pappendick and Ted Pappendick, the Eleanor Noyes Crumpacker Endowment Fund, and P.J. and Julie Solit.