Would scarcely know that we were gone, Christopher T. Creyts; Matthew Day Jackson; Collaborative Art Editions

Artwork Overview

Christopher T. Creyts; Matthew Day Jackson; Collaborative Art Editions, Would scarcely know that we were gone
Christopher T. Creyts; Matthew Day Jackson; Collaborative Art Editions, Would scarcely know that we were gone
Matthew Day Jackson , Collaborative Art Editions , Christopher T. Creyts
Would scarcely know that we were gone
2015–2016
Matthew Day Jackson, artist
born 1974
Collaborative Art Editions, publisher
Christopher T. Creyts, printer
Would scarcely know that we were gone, 2015–2016
Portfolio/Series title: There Will Come Soft Rains
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: color intaglio
Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 490 x 331 mm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 19 5/16 x 13 1/16 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 686 x 521 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 27 x 20 1/2 in
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 494 x 334 mm
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 7/16 x 13 1/8 in
Credit line: Museum purchase: Peter T. Bohan Art Acquisition Fund
Accession number: 2016.0024.13
Not on display
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Images

Label texts

The ivory-billed woodpecker is either extinct or so critically endangered that the species has not been definitively identified in the wild for decades. Possible sightings have motivated the establishment of wildlife refuges in Arkansas and Louisiana.
Audubon’s woodpeckers are depicted stripping bark from dead tree limbs to find the beetles and larvae. Beyond our view of this flaky bark, Jackson appropriates a portion of 16th-century Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting, The Triumph of Death. The painting acknowledges the Dance of Death, an allegory of death’s universality, and evokes the precarious nature of life during the many plague epidemics beginning with the Black Death in the
14th century and reoccurring periodically throughout Eurasia until the 19th century. There Will Come Soft Rains closes its own dance with death by gently reminding us that, like the nursery rhyme concludes, we all fall down.

Exhibitions

Audubon in the Anthropocene: Works by Matthew Day Jackson
Kate Meyer, curator
2020
Audubon in the Anthropocene: Works by Matthew Day Jackson
Kate Meyer, curator
2020
Conference of the Birds
Emily Kruse, curator
Sabine Rishell, curator
2020

Resources

Audio

Listen to a curator talk about this work.
Listen to a curator talk about this work.
The last universally accepted sighting of the ivory-billed woodpecker was in 1944, and yet many birdwatchers and scientists have reported spotting but not conclusively photographing Audubon’s favorite bird since then. Call me a foolish optimist, but I want to believe there might be a few elusive ivory-billed woodpeckers left in the forested swamps of the American South. Don’t you?

Links

See the original art by John James Audubon referenced in this print.