Visual shocks of what ifs

by in Archives, At the Centers dept, Bugle Section, Palette News Arts Network/PNAN, PaletteBoards Section
Scratched into the lithographic stone, the words of a children's game—"HEAVY HEAVY HANGS OVER THY HEAD"—prophesies doom as a mouse gnaws a cord attached to a rifle suspended from a nail over a sleeping baby. Rockwell Kent created this print in 1946, but in our present age of Columbine, Sandy Hook, and heartbreakingly far too many other gun massacres to name, this shocking image speaks to us forcefully.
Scratched into the lithographic stone, the words of a children’s game—”HEAVY HEAVY HANGS OVER THY HEAD”—prophesies doom as a mouse gnaws a cord attached to a rifle suspended from a nail over a sleeping baby. Rockwell Kent created this print in 1946, but in our present age of Columbine, Sandy Hook, and heartbreakingly far too many other gun massacres to name, this shocking image speaks to us forcefully.

 

Organized by Amy N. Worthen, curator of prints and drawings at the Des Moines (Iowa) Art Center, “Heavy Heavy Hands Over Thy Head” is an exhibition that looks at ways that artists from the 16th century to our time have depicted firearms, shooters and the victims of gun violence.

On view through September 25, 2016 in the John Brady Print Gallery, the 36 prints, photographs, drawings and sculpture selected from the center’s permanent collections are by: Dmitri Baltermants, Jacques Callot, Joseph Cornell, Stefano della Bella, J. N. “Ding” Darling, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, Natalia Goncharova, Winslow Homer, Rockwell Kent, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Lindner, Kerry James Marshall, Irving Norman, José Clemente Orozco, Mitchell Squire, Antonio Tempesta and others.

Whether approaching this subject matter with high seriousness, objectivity, admiration, irony, or with anguish, these works show people using guns in military actions, inter-personal conflicts, murder, assassination and the hunting of animals.

For more detail information on this exhibition, including others: www.desmoinesartcenter.org