id: 167458 accession number: 2009.270 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/2009.270 updated: 2021-01-09 10:01:10.784000 Codex Artaud XXI, 1972. Nancy Spero (American, 1926-2009). Cut and pasted papers, printed text, watercolor, metallic paints, pen, and stamped ink; sheet: 173.4 x 52.6 cm (68 1/4 x 20 11/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2009.270 © The Nancy Spero and Leon Golub Foundation for the Arts/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY title: Codex Artaud XXI title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1972 creation date earliest: 1972 creation date latest: 1972 current location: creditline: Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund copyright: © The Nancy Spero and Leon Golub Foundation for the Arts/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY --- culture: America, 20th century technique: cut and pasted papers, printed text, watercolor, metallic paints, pen, and stamped ink department: Drawings collection: DR - American 20th Century type: Drawing find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * Nancy Spero (American, 1926-2009) - artist --- measurements: Sheet: 173.4 x 52.6 cm (68 1/4 x 20 11/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950-1980 opening date: 2017-09-13T04:00:00 Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950-1980. The Met Breuer, New York, NY (September 13, 2017-January 14, 2018). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS * The Met Breuer, New York, NY (9/13/2017 - 1/14/2018)" :Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, 1950-1980" pl. 85. --- PROVENANCE --- fun fact: digital description: wall description: Spero’s Codex Artaud is comprised of a series of 34 scrolls uniting texts by Antoine Artaud, the French actor, playwright, and poet of highly allusive writings, with Spero’s decidedly personal, feminist imagery. Codex Artaud XXI presents an extract from one of Artaud’s poems arranged in a pristine array of typed capital letters. Spero’s graphic additions include two converging cross-hatched triangles, a tiny woman riding a rat, and a heroic male nude holding a sword. The male figure, which occupies the bottom of the sheet, references Benvenuto Cellini’s sculpture Perseus Beheading Medusa (1545-54), a quintessential Renaissance subject concerned with the silencing of a powerful woman. By combining the writings of a poet who was considered an outcast and a madman with a specifically female pictorial language, Spero created a body of work that was to inspire future generations of feminist artists. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS --- IMAGES