Mineral Spirit (also known as Death by Suffocation)

Art Green recalls a conversation in 1963 with fellow student William Schwedler at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago regarding an idea for a jointly-made painting in Vera Berdich’s (1915‒2003) etching class. (See Smart Museum 2001.575-576.) Green noticed arresting religious images and home-made shrines around his own neighborhood and, with Schwedler, imagined a post-apocalyptic era in which survivors treasured the few relics that had survived from the past, even though they might have no idea of their original meaning or purpose. They wondered how some artifacts might attain a holy status, and how some future artist might choose to represent them. Could images of long-forgotten faces become icons in a far-off future?
The seated figure in the center of the etching combines elements from two photographs published in Time magazine: a portrait that Green liked for its flatness, and another representing Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense (1961‒1968), pondering the Vietnam War. He used both photographs, disconnected from their referents in Time, in different works. In a similar painting Green makes more obvious his particular debt to the fantastic industrialized landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico (1888‒1978) and to the cartoon derivation of his kinetic symbols (1996.60, 2001.582p-r).