Accession Number
2004/2.80.10

Title
Oh! if one of Them, some fine evening, would try

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
Tenth 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. 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 has two series of thick black parallel lines that form a zig-zag pattern and connect out to a series of spheres, resembling a wall-mounted coat rack. There are two lines of spheres; the three on the top are light purple and the three on the bottom are dark purple. The background and the structure created by the parallel lines is in a dark purple. The print is signed and editioned 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
coatracks
poetry
portfolios (groups of works)
screen prints