Blow Top Blues: The Fire Next Time

"At the time Xerox was very popular with artists. You know, whenever a machine is obsolete, artists get a hold of it. In this work Betye used a Xerox of an image she took from a cereal box, which was like a mask without eyes. We cut out the eyes and then on the original she wrote a word on the figure’s turban: liberation. Then the whole thing was Xeroxed and then glued to a lithograph. What's particularly interesting about that print for today's context is that there were fires in Los Angeles at the time, and she went in her backyard and photographed flames. Then I photo-interpreted the flames in a different way. Usually you print CMYK, but instead I took all the separations and printed them in flamelike colours, so we get those very vigorous orange and red flames flickering behind the head." -Judith Solodkin