Ray Johnson
American, 1927-1995
Elvis Presley #1 (Oedipus)
INV-2485
Ray Johnson
American, 1927-19951956-58
Elvis Presley #1 (Oedipus)
Ray Johnson American, 1927-1995 →Pop Artcollagedrawings (visual works)
Date
1956-58
Medium
Offset lithograph in black on tan wove paper, with brush and red ink and matte opaque red and blue paint, on board
Dimensions
27.7 × 21 cm (10 15/16 × 8 5/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Promised gift of The William S. Wilson Collection of Ray Johnson
To make this work, Ray Johnson began with a photograph of Elvis Presley in profile, his eyes downcast and shrouded in shadow. Johnson then covered the work in red tempera, letting the paint drip down around the singer’s sinister sockets, evoking both blood and tears. In doing so, Johnson tethered Elvis, a cult figure of the present, to one from the mythological past: Oedipus, who gouged out his eyes to atone for committing patricide and incest. Works like Elvis Presley #1 situate Johnson among the earliest pioneers of Pop Art. In the 1960s Andy Warhol also gravitated to Elvis’s photographic likeness, incorporating it into silkscreened grids that commented on celebrity culture through the repetition and degredation of popular imagery.
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