Happy Easter

The vanity of earthly power
'gainst that of heaven soon is shown;
For at the long appointed hour
an angel came and moved the stone.

The Resurrection. 1994.
oil, pencil, enamel, and ink on paper, mounted on 19th century bookplate.
5-7/8 x 4-1/4 in.

This is from a series of works that were done in preparation for Reinventing the Emblem: Contemporary Artist Recreate a Renaissance Idea exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery in 1995. This exhibition presented sixteenth- and seventeenth-century emblems (printed images with proverb-like texts) and contemporary works directly inspired by the tradition. The accompanying catalog essays examine the Renaissance form, which addressed love, politics, and religion in ways that capitalized on the newly invented printing press, and reviews the contemporary updates by such artists as Peter Halley, Lesley Dill, Joseph Kosuth, Mark Kostabi, and Lawrence Weiner. The image for this piece, which was included in the exhibition, was composed on the back of an old National Geographic map and then glued over top of an engraved illustration from an 1840's devotional book.