Details — Click to read
Monument to the Constitution of the United States in the series “Imaginary Monuments”, 2011-2012
Direct gravure etching on nine copper plates printed on nine sheets of handmade gampi paper, joined and backed with sekishu kozo paper. 48 x 63 inches unframed. Edition: 25 + 8 proofs. Co-published by Mullowney Printing, Portland, OR and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco. Last available edition: 5/25
Price is inclusive of framing
About the work:
Works in “Imaginary Monuments” depict historical texts housed within proposed monuments that honor or enshrine the text’s topic. Most of the monuments incorporate multiple documents, conveying in words and images the complex and sometimes conflicting histories and opinions behind subjects such as the judicial system, incarceration, economics, capitalism, trade, immigration, slavery, freedom of speech, treaties, governance, social justice and civil rights.
Monument to the Constitution of the United States (2011–12), the first gravure in “Imaginary Monuments”, is based on a drawing by the same title (108 x 132 ¼ inches; 274.32 x 335.92) created while Birk was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow in Washington D.C. (2007) after he saw Albrecht Dürer’s Triumphal Arch, then on view at the National Gallery of Art.
Birk’s seminal monument drawing, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, faith- fully reproduces the articles of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and all amendments as of 2012. Birk’s visual interpretation of these texts, whether as a drawing or gravure, illuminates the ideas in the articles of the Constitution while also illustrating and exposing how US citizens, the government and the courts have applied and interpreted the texts across time. Birk further shows the Constitution as an evolving document. By representing a building under-construction, Birk leaves space in his rendering for future amendments.
This gravure is held in several public collections, including the Library of Congress; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Addison Gallery of American Art; and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, among others.
