Accession Number2004/2.80.11
TitleThus, she would come, escaped, half-dead to my door
Artist(s)Patrick CaulfieldArtist NationalityBritish (modern)Object Creation Date1973Medium & Supportscreenprint on paperDimensions 16 1/8 in x 14 3/16 in (40.96 cm x 36.04 cm);24 in x 22 1/16 in (60.96 cm x 56.04 cm)
Credit LineGift of Jack A. and Noreen RounickSubject matterEleventh in a series of twenty-two screenprints by British Pop artist Patrick Caulfield, this print accompanies a book of poems by the French poet and art critic Jules Laforgue. An almost identical scene is depicted in the previous print in this series "Oh! If one of them, some fine evening, would try" (UMMA 2004/2.80.10).
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 poet's 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 DescriptionThis print depicts a wall-mounted coat rack, depicted with black-outlined grey zig-zag bars that connect to three yellow spheres above, and two red spheres below. There is a light grey shape hanging over the center sphere. The background is uniformly colored a peachy-beige. The print is signed and editioned in pencile (l.r.) "Patrick Caulfield AP".
Primary Object Classification Print Primary Object Typeartist's proofCollection AreaModern and ContemporaryRightsIf 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