Oh Helen, I roam my room
Patrick Caulfield; Frank Kicherer; Advanced Graphics ; Petersburg Press; Waddington Graphics
Description
Subject Matter:
Fifthteenth in a series of twenty-two, this print accompanies a book of poems by the French poet and art critic Jules Laforgue and screenprints by British Pop artist Patrick Caulfield. The composition of this print is almost identical, save the glass, to the previous work in this series titled "Along a twilighted sky" (UMMA 2004/2.80.14).
Admired by the artist, Laforgue was a nineteenth-century symbolist poet who was one of the inventors of vers libre or "free verse" poetry. This new form of poetic verse relied on the phrase as a unit rather than constraining the poetic verse to set numbers of syllables. Laforgue’s poetry became important for later poets like T.S. Eliot because of its blending of observations of everyday life with poetic associations. In this book, Caulfield used the long-dead poets verses as inspiration for twenty-two scenes, created in colorful screenprint. Of these prints, Caulfield noted that “They are not illustrations but complementary images. There are few visually descriptive lines in Laforgue. The images suggest the things I have imagined the poet seeing when he wrote the poem…”
Physical Description:
This print shows a clear glass on a windowsill, both outlined in black. The window is colored a muted yellow and solid blue sky depicted through the window. The print is signed and editioned in pencil (l.r.) "Patrick Caulfield AP".
Usage Rights:
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