Object number2022.31
Anti-Retro
Date2018
Artist
Andrea Carlson
(American, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and European Settlers, born 1979)
CultureOjibwa, American
MediumScreenprint
EditionEdition 18 of 20, plus 2 archive proofs, 3 artist's proofs, 1 bon á tirer, 2 hors commerce, 3 printer's proofs, 1 trial proof
DimensionsImage: 34 x 47 7/8 in. (86.4 x 121.6 cm)
Framed: 36 3/16 x 50 x 1 5/16 in. (91.9 x 127 x 3.3 cm)
Framed: 36 3/16 x 50 x 1 5/16 in. (91.9 x 127 x 3.3 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, Francis Woolsey and Helen Silkman Bronson, class of 1924, Fund
On View
Not on viewPeriod21st c
Classification(s)
SignedOn recto, signed lower right corner in silver pencil: Andrea Carlson
InscribedOn recto, by artist, lower right edge in silver pencil: 2018; lower left corner: 18/20
ProvenancePurchased from Highpoint Center for PrintmakingVassar Exhibitions
Exhibition HistoryWhat Now? (Or Not Yet), Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, January 21 - September 10, 2023Label TextA horse falls through Andrea Carlson’s frame, caught mid- descent. Figures from Western and spaghetti Western films scatter across the composition, their roles disrupted. These genres fundamentally shaped the perception of Native Americans throughout the twentieth century. Anti-Retro exemplifies Carlson’s practice of reutilizing accepted Western visual codes to expose their violence. The reference to Mondo Cane, a 1962 Italian “shockumentary” that staged and exploited cultural practices around the world, elicits how film creates popular memory and romanticizes conquest while erasing its brutality. Two trees frame the chaotic action while marking Indigenous presence that predates settler intervention. Carlson disrupts these visual systems through what she calls “unlikely, imaginary horizons,” refusing the seamless mythologies that Western genres construct from Indigenous dispossession.
DescriptionIn the foreground on left are two figures dressed in American Western clothes interlocked in a fight and on right is a partial figure riding a partially visible horse. In the midground is a horse at center and a mask-like face on right with the words "MONDO CANE" all set against a rocky and vaguely glacier-like landscape with a spherical sun-like form on the horizon and smooth, sea-like ground. Negative text in lower center reads: ANTI- / RETRO
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge.
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John Flaxman
1791
Culture: British
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