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Untitled book page

Purvis Young
  • Untitled book page

    Click on image to enlarge

    Photo: Stephen Pitkin/Pitkin Studio
1978
Ballpoint pen, marker, crayon, on letter, glued to found book
11.5 x 9.5 inches
Collection of
Baltimore Museum of Art
Museum purchase and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Description

In the late 1960s, Young began collecting discarded books, magazines, and papers of all kinds to make his own books of sketches and observations. One page from these books is made of a Congress on Racial Equality (CORE ) fundraising letter that summons the memory of Emmitt Till's murder. Young has glossed the letter with a funeral ring of mourners. Young's outrage at our era's hypocrisy and injustice binds together the many figuralisms: the conjure book of expressionist painting styles, the conjure book of the Bible, and the work-in-progress conjure book of American history.