Description:
10 Autobiographical sketches by Emmett Williams with a colophon and one original drawing. Published by edition Hansjörg Mayer of Stuttgart and London. All the plates are signed and dated on the lower margin. Cardboard portfolio with an attached title page.
Label Text:
Artist Statement:
I don't know why - one never really knows why - but in 1976, while artist-in-residence at Mount Holyoke college in Massachusetts, I began a series of paintings based on transpositions of my profile. No, it wasn't narcissistic, but purely formalistic. There is nothing really autobiographical about the "sketches", except for my silhouette. I might as well have used squares, circles and cubes. Come to think of it, some of the prints are autobiographical. For example, the dinosaur skeleton isn't there simply because I "borrowed" it from my son Garry. It is there because when I was little my big ambition was to be a paleontologist. Garry wasn't amused, by the way, that I had ruined one of his favorite playthings. Bur perhaps my theft was really a GOOD THING. Just suppose he had grown up to be a paleontologist: He wouldn't be directing his own theater or singing the lead role in Cosi fan tutti! - Emmett Williams
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=UM+1981.41 |
