Six Lithographs: "J " Print (J Print, Christ Landscape, "Sermon on the Mount")

The central image in this print of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount comes from a pre-existing lithographic stone made by an anonymous nineteenth-century biblical illustrator. By incorporating this earlier lithographic image into his own composition, H. C. Westermann extended collage techniques that he was simultaneously exploring in his sketchbooks into a final print. Unlike earlier works that allude to the same theme, but incorporate sci-fi elements like flying comets and spaceships, "J" Print/i> shifts attention to the landscape, where we see a starving wounded dog, a cattle skull, and a mechanical head on a spring. These objects have uniformly bleak associations in Westermann's work, putting the "J" Print image at odds with the Sermon on the Mount and its message of humility and peace. In this case, the juxtaposition of imagery might speak to Westermann's frustration about the Vietnam War, which had not yet ended when he made the print, and to the welfare of his son, a Marine who was wounded in Vietnam.