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

Artwork Overview

born 1974
Would scarcely know that we were gone, 2015–2016
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 1/2 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

Audubon in the Anthropocene: Works by Matthew Day Jackson
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.
Audubon in the Anthropocene: Works by Matthew Day Jackson
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

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Citations

Kanost, Elizabeth, ed., ed. Spencer Museum of Art Annual Report, Fiscal Years 2016 & 2017. Lawrence, Kansas: Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, 2018.