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In this untitled silkscreen printed in varying shades of black ink, Stevens used only two photographic images of Rosa Luxemburg. Both are reproduced twice but are modified so that the overall effect is of four photographic portraits placed against a dark background. Throughout there is evidence of pixels, which conveys a sense of history and newspaper journalism. Reading from left to right, the composition first shows the young Rosa in a three-quarters length and profile pose; next, the same image is repeated but cropped tightly as a headshot. Overlapping this is a third portrait, a bust in negative of the adult Rosa, which in turn overlaps its double in positive, but of this last portrait only the upper half of Luxemburg’s face is visible. At the bottom center, in a calligraphic hand, is written Rosa Luxemburg.
This print differs from others in the series because, here, the artist has omitted the horrific image of the martyred socialist’s decomposing head—retrieved from a canal five months after her brutal murder—and related portrayals of Alice Stevens as a child, young mother, and in old age. The omission of her mother, who had experienced the anguish of the death of a teenage son, may relate to the suicide of the artist’s son Steven in 1981. As Reese Williams points out, and the artist later acknowledged, “unseen, and unknowable to the viewer, Steven Baranik is a third presence in the Ordinary/Extraordinary series. The artist’s connection with his presence and her process of integrating the pain of his physical death catalyze the regenerative energy in the [series].” [2]
Three years later, Stevens wrote a poem that opens as a conversation with her aging mother and ends with a lament for her son:
You’re almost 90 I say
She laughs
That’s pretty old I say
Does it hurt I say
How does it feel to be old?
What is it like?
She searches patient with me
It’s the way it is
She says and I know how
Simplicity and wisdom are the same,
the circle coming back on itself. Neruda:
The blood of the children in the streets is like
the blood of the children in the streets.
My life is not like it is unlike why pretend?
There are no mistakes only choices I want to get
to the bottom of things: how can I care about things
when he took our life?
For he made fish hide and crabs scuttle the sun
shine on his skin seals laugh puppy dogs roll over
his father and I gasp at the splashing brightness
of his arrogant life
The blood of my child is mixed with earth
his ash on water; the things that he liked
go on past his liking
How can they do that? [2]
The silkscreen is from A Portfolio of Thirteen Prints published by the Anthology Film Archives in New York in 1982 and produced at Porter-Weiner Studio. Five other prints in the portfolio, including one of her husband Rudolf Baranik, were also produced by that studio.
Notes:
[1] Fionna Barber, “May Stevens in Conversation with Fionna Barber,” Circa, 41 (August–September 1988), 21–25.
[2] Reese Williams, “A Third Presence,” in May Stevens: Ordinary. Extraordinary, ed. Melissa Davakis and Janis Bell. Exhibition catalogue. (New York: Universe Books in association with Olin Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, 1988), 48.
[3] Stevens quoted in Josephine Withers, “Revisioning Our Foremothers: Reflections on the “Ordinary. Extraordinary” Art of May Stevens,” Feminist Studies13, no. 3 (Autumn 1987), 501.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History2006
Self/Image: Portraiture from Copley to Close
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (8/30/2006 - 12/31/2006)
2010
Looking At/Looking In: Bodies and Faces in Contemporary Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (5/11/2010 - 8/8/2010)
2014-2015
Love & Loss
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (10/11/2014-12/13/2015)
2021
The Voyage of Life: Art, Allegory, and Community Response
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (7/16/2021 - 12/12/2021)
Published References
DepartmentAmerican Art
Untitled
Artist
May Stevens
(born 1924)
Date1982
Mediumsilkscreen on paper
DimensionsFrame: 24 3/4 x 32 1/2 in. (62.9 x 82.6 cm)
Paper: 22 x 29 3/4 in. (55.9 x 75.6 cm)
Image: 16 3/4 x 23 3/4 in. (42.5 x 60.3 cm)
SignedMay Stevens 1982
Credit LineGift of the American Art Foundation
CopyrightCopyright Unknown
Object number1984.2.1.i
DescriptionMay Stevens’s Ordinary/Extraordinary series of collages, paintings, and prints began in 1976 with a collage entitled Two Women. The women were the artist’s biological mother Alice Stevens (1895–1985) and the Polish-born German Socialist heroine Rosa Luxemburg (1870–1919). In the first issue of the feminist publication Heresies, the artist explained “the purpose was to investigate the comparison and possible relationship between a very private woman who lived only in a domestic situation, a personal, private sphere, and the life of a woman whose work was on an international scale. … So I wanted to take the life of an ‘ordinary’ woman, my mother, and the life of an ‘extraordinary’ woman, and to show that they were both ordinary and extraordinary.” [1] In this untitled silkscreen printed in varying shades of black ink, Stevens used only two photographic images of Rosa Luxemburg. Both are reproduced twice but are modified so that the overall effect is of four photographic portraits placed against a dark background. Throughout there is evidence of pixels, which conveys a sense of history and newspaper journalism. Reading from left to right, the composition first shows the young Rosa in a three-quarters length and profile pose; next, the same image is repeated but cropped tightly as a headshot. Overlapping this is a third portrait, a bust in negative of the adult Rosa, which in turn overlaps its double in positive, but of this last portrait only the upper half of Luxemburg’s face is visible. At the bottom center, in a calligraphic hand, is written Rosa Luxemburg.
This print differs from others in the series because, here, the artist has omitted the horrific image of the martyred socialist’s decomposing head—retrieved from a canal five months after her brutal murder—and related portrayals of Alice Stevens as a child, young mother, and in old age. The omission of her mother, who had experienced the anguish of the death of a teenage son, may relate to the suicide of the artist’s son Steven in 1981. As Reese Williams points out, and the artist later acknowledged, “unseen, and unknowable to the viewer, Steven Baranik is a third presence in the Ordinary/Extraordinary series. The artist’s connection with his presence and her process of integrating the pain of his physical death catalyze the regenerative energy in the [series].” [2]
Three years later, Stevens wrote a poem that opens as a conversation with her aging mother and ends with a lament for her son:
You’re almost 90 I say
She laughs
That’s pretty old I say
Does it hurt I say
How does it feel to be old?
What is it like?
She searches patient with me
It’s the way it is
She says and I know how
Simplicity and wisdom are the same,
the circle coming back on itself. Neruda:
The blood of the children in the streets is like
the blood of the children in the streets.
My life is not like it is unlike why pretend?
There are no mistakes only choices I want to get
to the bottom of things: how can I care about things
when he took our life?
For he made fish hide and crabs scuttle the sun
shine on his skin seals laugh puppy dogs roll over
his father and I gasp at the splashing brightness
of his arrogant life
The blood of my child is mixed with earth
his ash on water; the things that he liked
go on past his liking
How can they do that? [2]
The silkscreen is from A Portfolio of Thirteen Prints published by the Anthology Film Archives in New York in 1982 and produced at Porter-Weiner Studio. Five other prints in the portfolio, including one of her husband Rudolf Baranik, were also produced by that studio.
Notes:
[1] Fionna Barber, “May Stevens in Conversation with Fionna Barber,” Circa, 41 (August–September 1988), 21–25.
[2] Reese Williams, “A Third Presence,” in May Stevens: Ordinary. Extraordinary, ed. Melissa Davakis and Janis Bell. Exhibition catalogue. (New York: Universe Books in association with Olin Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH, 1988), 48.
[3] Stevens quoted in Josephine Withers, “Revisioning Our Foremothers: Reflections on the “Ordinary. Extraordinary” Art of May Stevens,” Feminist Studies13, no. 3 (Autumn 1987), 501.
ProvenanceFrom 1984
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by the American Art Foundation through The Pace Gallery, New York on March 20, 1984. [1]
Notes:
[1] Letter, March 20, 1984, object file.
Exhibition History2006
Self/Image: Portraiture from Copley to Close
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (8/30/2006 - 12/31/2006)
2010
Looking At/Looking In: Bodies and Faces in Contemporary Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (5/11/2010 - 8/8/2010)
2014-2015
Love & Loss
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (10/11/2014-12/13/2015)
2021
The Voyage of Life: Art, Allegory, and Community Response
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (7/16/2021 - 12/12/2021)
Published References
Status
Not on view