 A selection of prints and paintings from Beulah Land,
1965-66.
Unless otherwise noted,
all are Collection Oakland Museum of California.
Images marked
** are described
in the catalog for my 2003 Retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California.
Click the
** to go to the
description.
Scroll down for the paintings, click the
thumbnails
for larger views.
Beulah Land,
Collection Oakland Museum
|
In
1965-6, I condensed/confirmed the imagery of the 18 x 18 inch collages
into a series drawings and then etchings of Beulah Land, the place in Paul Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress where the good go just outside the gates of
Paradise to wait for final entry to Heaven. My book showed the way
there, the objects and landmarks and emblems of the place, and the
entrance to Arcadia (from Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego) at the
end. The image immediately below is a hand-colored proof of a
the plate for the first version of the title page of
Beulah
Land.
Throughout the book, I used nineteenth century ideas and images of
California like the crockery I imagined my great aunts had that was
decorated with California poppies and blue birds of happiness. I made
the Poppy Cup a symbol of woman as well as the pot of gold at
the end of the rainbow. It was nineteenth century California as the
golden land of plenty.
|
1.
Beulah Land: title page
on exhibition Fred Martin Retrospective, 2003
at the Oakland Museum |
2.
Beulah Land, pl. 7. (left)
and artist's proof for
"Poppy Cup" (right)
on exhibition Fred Martin Retrospective, 2003
at the Oakland Museum |
|
|
3.
Artist's proof for Beulah Land title page, first version. |
4.
** Beulah Land, Artist's Proof
for "Poppy Cup.
|
5.
Beulah Land, Artist's Proof
for "Earth Urn." |
6.
Beulah Land, cover. |
7.
Beulah Land, pl. 7,
"Harvest Song."
|
8.
Beulah Land, pl. 8,
"Harvest."
|
9.
Beulah Land, pl. 11,
"Old Tomb."
|
| |
|
|
10.
Beulah Land, epigraph.
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
11. Beulah Land, detail of cover. |
|
|
|
