Etching. The head of a strange, prehistoric-looking creature with an elephantine snout, and facing right, is portrayed against a cloudy sky.
The outline of the creature’s back adjoining the clouds at the upper right has been burnished.
- Catalogue Number
- E.122
- Title and Date
- Imagined head (The silent hour) 1999
- Description of Featured Image
- The head of a strange, prehistoric-looking creature with an elephantine snout is depicted against a cloudy sky, facing right.
- Where Made
- Alphington, Melbourne
- Medium Category and Technique
- Intaglio Print: Etching and burnishing on copper
- Support
- Wove paper. Identified papers: BFK Rives paper with watermark: ‘BFK RIVES / FRANCE’ with infinity symbol.
- Dimensions
-
Image size: 59 x 75 mm
Matrix size: 59 x 75 mm - Artist’s Record Number
- RAE.135
- Printer(s) and Workshop(s)
- All impressions printed by Rick Amor in his Alphington studio.
- Summary Edition Information
- Three states. No edition.
- Literature
- For an illustration of the painting The silent hour, 1999, see Gavin Fry, Rick Amor, Beagle Press, Roseville, NSW, 2008, p. 113.
- Collections
- State Library of Victoria, Melbourne: three state impressions, numbered 1 through 3.
- Comment
Amor has described the weird, entirely imagined animal in this etching as being like something that might be found in a museum display case – an extinct creature from the prehistoric past. However, he has also likened the head, with its grotesque distortions, to some of Francis Bacon’s surreal inventions of the late 1940s.
The motif found in E.122 first appeared in one of Amor’s sketchbook drawings and occurred subsequently in several of his paintings, notably The silent hour, 1999, where it is seen, in reverse orientation, in a large vitrine (Fry 2008). The silent hour was the artist’s source for the rendering of the imagined creature in the present etching, though in the print the museum context has been removed and the creature is depicted as a lapidified part of the landscape.
The etching was largely resolved in the first state, but was submitted to tonal refinements in the two states that followed. Initially, Amor’s intaglio record books give the title of this work as Figure (The quiet hour), but the artist later decided to change the title to its present form.
- Keywords
- Imagined creature
- URL
- https://catalogue.rickamor.com.au/works/intaglio/imagined-head-the-silent-hour/
Record last updated 16/02/2021