are inspired by the Pergamon as much as my Frieze Studies, but it obviously goes in a very different direction.  These acrylic drawings are done on canvases that are almost seven feet tall and of varying width depending on how they are hung. The canvases are left raw and unstretched to draw attention to their materiality, as if they, like the Temple itself, are ruined artifacts.

 

These drawings depict my personal interactions with Zeus and Athena the stars of the Pergamon frieze.  The drawings imitate the Pergamon's style of roiling, violent tableaux.  Such crowded, chaotic, scenes are a hallmark of Western art: beyond the Pergamon are the Ludovisi battle sarcophagus; the tympana of Gothic cathedrals; the spectacular paintings of Veronese and Delacroix; and the Mad Magazine center spreads of Jack Davis, Tom Richmond and Mort Drucker.  The drawings' graphic, comic-strip style is in keeping with the comic-strip way the Pergamon tells its story.  Carrying on the Western art history theme, among the piles of dead men and defiled women are visual quotations from great and not-so-great works of Western art.