Crying to the walls: My God! My God! will she relent?

Accession Number
2004/2.80.7

Title
Crying to the walls: My God! My God! will she relent?

Artist(s)
Patrick Caulfield

Artist Nationality
British (modern)

Object Creation Date
1973

Medium & Support
screenprint on paper

Dimensions
16 1/8 in x 14 3/16 in (41 cm x 36 cm);24 in x 22 1/16 in (61 cm x 56 cm)

Credit Line
Gift of Jack A. and Noreen Rounick

Subject matter
Seventh of twenty-two, this print was included in a book of poems by the French poet and art critic Jules Laforgue accompanied by screenprints by British Pop artist Patrick Caulfield. 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
At the center of the image, this print shows a yellow clock with white face on a yellow wall. The clock is outlined in thick black likes and the face has black-colored hands and dashes. The print is signed in pencil (l.r.) "Patrick Caulfield AP".

Primary Object Classification
Print

Primary Object Type
color print

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
Pop (fine arts styles)
artists' books (books)
artists' proofs
clocks
illustrated books
interior views
poetry
portfolios (groups of works)
screen prints
walls

& Author Notes

All Rights Reserved