The Ballad of Quantrill's Raiders, Joe Coleman

Artwork Overview

Joe Coleman, The Ballad of Quantrill's Raiders
Joe Coleman, The Ballad of Quantrill's Raiders
Joe Coleman
The Ballad of Quantrill's Raiders
1992
Joe Coleman
born 1955
The Ballad of Quantrill's Raiders, 1992
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: hardboard; cloth; acrylic
Dimensions:
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): 55.9 x 71.1 cm
Object Height/Width (Height x Width): 22 x 28 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 26 x 32 x 2 in
Credit line: Museum purchase: Helen Foresman Spencer Art Acquisition Fund
Accession number: 2012.0046
Not on display
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Exhibition Label: "This Land," Mar-2014, Kate Meyer Members of the New England Emigrant Aid Company settled Lawrence to ensure that Kansas would enter the Union as an anti-slavery or free state. Their cause was met with violent opposition from settlers who supported slavery in a conflict termed “Bleeding Kansas,” a prelude to the Civil War. Lawrence was sacked by pro-slavery guerrilla forces in 1856, and again, during the war in 1863. As shown in the top portion of Joe Coleman’s 1992 depiction, on the morning of August 21, 1863, William Clark Quantrill entered Lawrence. He ordered his men to kill any man old enough to wield a gun, but leave women and children alone. He came especially for noted Jayhawker James Lane, who escaped through a corn field. For four hours, the raiders looted and burned the city, killing between 150-200 men. Lawrence’s tumultuous history remains inexorably linked to a larger story of American westward expansion and civil conflict. Archive Label: "A Kansas Art Sampler," 2004, Kate Meyer Joe Coleman paints obsessive and microscopically detailed images that lay bare the often-grizzly extremes of human thought, history and experience. Coleman, who refers to his own career as his “artistic pathology,” unflinchingly takes on subjects such as his own fear of disease, the relationship between sex violence and death, the outsider painter Henry Darger, and the Catholic notion of the Man of Sorrows. The story of William Clark Quantrill’s bloody attack on the city of Lawrence on August 21, 1863, captivated the artist and provided him with an opportunity to study and paint a thoroughly documented example of violence in U.S. history.

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