DIGITAL OBJECT FILES\Artists\Spero,Nancy\Frizzel,Deborah,Leon Golub & Nancy Spero-The Fighting is the Dance, NYARTS,June 2000.pdf

Desaparecidos

Artist Nancy Spero (American, 1926 - 2010)

Date1992

MediumHand printing on paper

Dimensions26 x 88 in.

ClassificationsIntaglio

Credit LineMembers Purchase Fund

Terms

Object number2001.46

DescriptionThe title “Desaparecidos” refers to the “disappeared ones,” people abducted and imprisoned, or murdered, during the reign of terror of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s. The hemorrhage of violence against women, in particular, mass rape as a tactic of war, has been an on-going theme in Spero’s work since her “War Series” and “Torture of Women”. As the British art historian and theorist, Jon Bird, writes, “It is hard to find other representations in the history of art that convey such furious condemnation – perhaps Goya’s “Disasters of War”, Otto Dix’s etchings of trench warfare, or an earlier tradition, one referenced by Spero herself, the medieval “Beatus Apocalypse of Gerona” depicting the wars of angels and demons and the horrific fate of non-believers.”(1)1
In the five panel work on paper “Desaparecidos”, the artist achieves multiple effects that give the impression of an ancient rubbing brought to the surface, a fugitive archaic commemoration. Spero willfully creates a sense of uncertainty and unease. Three middle panels of blue handmade paper are flanked by two outer panels of white handmade paper, suggesting a symmetry, but each piece of paper is a different size and each is oriented on a different plane. Reminiscent of a classical frieze, the format implies a narrative that might be “read” from left to right, or right to left, but the images fade in and out of focus, appearing and disappearing, becoming indecipherable as a narrative. The work embodies, structurally, the theme of the “disappeared” and the disappearance of women from written histories in general.
The left-hand panel has a mottled and highly textured ground printed in coppery umbers and the rusty color of dried blood. On top of this ground hovers a hand-printed doubled figure of a grainy mud color. While the twin figures are printed from the same plate, the left figure is a ghost-like faded image and the right figure appears to have the depth and solidity of a bas-relief. Head in profile and body frontal, the hybrid figure evokes an Egyptian tomb goddess merged with a newspaper clipping of a woman in a simple dress, too indistinct to identify accurately apear scratched over the surface: “Beatiz,” “30,” a faded date and surname. Spero combines a phototransfer from the pages of Amnesty International publication with an image from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a powerful Hathor or Mut figure with the head of a lioness and the body of a human,2 linking cultures and time frames.(2)
The second and fourth panels at first appear nearly identical: both printed on blue paper, forming a frieze-like procession of mourning matrons in white. As if in a photonegative, the draped linear figures seem apparitions floating on sea-blue paper. The image derives from classical Roman sarcophagi carved with mourning figures. In profile, with classical drapery from head-to-toe, a single mourning figure is repeatedly hand-printed with subtle differences of pressure and ink application. As in a cinematic freeze-frame, the figures suggest movement in a rhythmical repetition, and their forms mingle with a wave-like indeterminate ground of transparent white ink over blue paper. The overall sweep of textures and linear rhythms, with the profiles moving right to left, invoke a transformative underworld passage.
The middle panel weaves repeated and overlapping images of three figures in a staccato rhythm: an Egyptian vulture goddess often found on tomb walls, a PreColumbian mummified or skeletal head, and a cursive, linear hieroglyph of Nekhebet, queen of the underworld, a guide and protector.(3)3 Printed in golden yellow ink over blue paper, the images evoke the ceremonial gold and lapis lazuli used by the ancient Egyptians, and refer again to the artist’s referencing “the body [as] a symbol and a hieroglyph, in a sense, an extension of language.”(4)4 Different versions of the vulture goddess have appeared in Spero’s work since “Torture of Women”, and they usually superimpose several points of view and moments in time: the head in profile, one wing seen from above, and the other wing and tail seen from below. What seems like a frozen moment of flight actually represents several moments of flight seen simultaneously.(5)5 Transitory states are implied by the fanning wing beats; the relief-like mummy heads appear to drift as Nekhebeit glides in and out of view. Spero suggests both mortality and immortality, a journey of passage and metamorphosis.
Contrasting the metaphysical implications of the three middle panels, the one on the right is a stark phototransfer from the pages of Amnesty International’s reports on the victims of governmental terrorism. Printed at the bottom of the panel in a dense indigo over a ground of clotted reds lies the corpse of a woman laid in a coffin angled obliquely away from the picture plane. Above the figure are thickly inked roller marks, weighing the image downward. The brutal content of the image is intensified by the handling of the colored inks on the delicate surface. Subverting any single meaning or reference, Spero mines history and contemporary events to stimulate multiple interpretations.

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Bibliogrphy

Jon Bird and Lisa Tickner, “Nancy Spero”, exhib. cat. (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1987); Dominique Nahas, ed., “Nancy Spero: Works Since 1950”, exhib. cat. (Syracuse, New York: Everson Museum of Art, 1987); Hanne Weskott, “Nancy Spero in der Glyptothek, Arbeiten auf Papier, 1981-1991”, exhib. cat. (Munich: Glyptothek am Koenigsplatz Muenchen, 1991); Linda Julian, ed., “Nancy Spero, 1993 Emrys Journal”, exhib. cat. (Greenville, SC: Greenville County Museum of Art, 1993); Susan Harris, “Nancy Spero”, exhib. cat. (Malmo: Malmo Konsthall, 1994); Jon Bird, Jo Anna Isaak, and Sylvere Lotringer, “Nancy Spero” (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1996); Elizabeth A. Macgregor and Catherine de Zegher, “Nancy Spero”, exhib. cat., (Birmingham, U.K.: Ikon Gallery, 1998).

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