Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Unable to open [object Object]: HTTP 0 attempting to load TileSource: https://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/iiif/18773545/info.json
Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
This object does not yet have a description.

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2006.82
People
Ellen Gallagher, American (Providence, Rhode Island 1965 -)
Published by Two Palms Press, Inc.
Title
Abu Simbel
Classification
Prints
Work Type
print
Date
2005-2006
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/315230

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Photogravure, watercolor, colored pencil, varnish, pomade, plasticine, blue fur, gold leaf and crystals
Technique
Photogravure
Dimensions
Sheet: 62.2 x 90.2 cm (24 1/2 x 35 1/2 in.)
Frame: 90 x 119.5 x 4.5 cm (35 7/16 x 47 1/16 x 1 3/4 in.)
Inscriptions and Marks
  • Signed: verso in graphite pencil: Ellen Gallagher 2005-06
  • inscription: verso in graphite pencil: 19/25 Ellen Gallagher 2005-06

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
[Two Palms Press, Inc., New York, New York], sold; to Harvard University Art Museums, August 2006.

State, Edition, Standard Reference Number

Edition
19/25

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund
Copyright
© Ellen Gallagher
Accession Year
2006
Object Number
2006.82
Division
Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact
am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Descriptions

Commentary
Ellen Gallagher's Abu Simbel print pushes the definition of printmaking to its outer limits. In 2000, she was asked to do an intervention at the Freud Museum in London and got interested in the photogravure of Abu Simbel, an ancient Egyptian site, hanging in his library. She determined to make a copy of the original photogravure and manipulate it with her race, history, and identity driven iconography. The "reprinted" photogravure has gold leaf, crystals, plasticine, and blue fur collaged to its surface, as well as some washes of watercolor. She describes it as "a tricked-out, multi-directional flow from Freud to ancient Egypt to Sun Ra to George Clinton."
Featured prominently in the upper left is a space ship shooting fireballs at the Egyptian monument that makes reference to the blaxploitation film, Space is the Place, in which Sun Ra has been sent to earth to rescue downtrodden African Americans and take them back to his astral utopia. He finds opposition from the Overseer, a black man who rides around in a huge Cadillac, oppressing other blacks. In Gallagher's print, the black pharaohnic figures sit atop Cadillac grills, surrounded by the decapitated heads of other black men, the victims of their oppression. In Sun Ra's movie, the Overseer is always has a woman on each arm and here the pharaohs are accompanied by two nurses, one of Gallagher's favorite characters. The nurse is an allusion to Eunice Rivers, the nurse who although caring and sympathetic, followed the orders of the doctors who conducted the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. She has become an exemplar of black complicity in the black subjugation. The same self-subjugation is exemplified by the three small figures on the right-a white man, an African American, and a black African-who Gallagher described to David Lasry, the publisher of the print, as "Harlem real estate developers."

Publication History

  • Stephan Wolohojian and Alvin L. Clark, Jr., Harvard Art Museum/ Handbook, ed. Stephan Wolohojian, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, 2008), p. 256, ill.
  • Thomas W. Lentz, ed., Harvard University Art Museums Annual Report 2006-7, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, 2008), p. 27, ill.

Exhibition History

  • Contemporary Art from the Harvard University Art Museums Collections, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, 06/23/2007 - 01/31/2008
  • Around Antique: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs (Teaching Gallery) S421, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 05/14/2010 - 09/04/2010
  • 32Q: 3740 Egyptian, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 05/12/2015 - 11/17/2015

Subjects and Contexts

  • Collection Highlights

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu