In The Bacchae of Euripides a strange contagion is sweeping the land of Thebes. The king suspects a foreigner is inciting the people to madness and in his zeal for control he vows to uproot the evildoers.
Dionysos, bearer of wine and joy! Dionysos, bearer of chaos and madness!
The bacchae, his followers, are driven to wild revelry thus threatening the power of the state.
The only logic the enemy understands is force. Only force. We will cut off the beasts head and kill it.
And hydra-headed-like it returns.
Rationalism is a great power. But corrupted by its need for order and its desire to assert itself everywhere and always it leads to destruction.
Tiresias the aged prophet foresees bad things to come. It doesn?t take a prophet now to see. We have palpably before us an unbalanced rationalism at war with all disagreement and all dissent, in the name of control and security. It doesn?t take a prophet to see that such a task is doomed to failure because of the paucity of its own vision.
But neither is the way to avoid disaster easy. Shall we all put on fawn skins and ivy and take up the thyrsus? Who among us is not tempted in their own being to crush and to control? The alternative is perhaps madness. Then again it may be ecstasy. This is hardly a foreign policy brief.
The object is neither to exhibit a clear description of the play nor to give a didactic statement of politics. There exists both a war within and, more and more, a war without.
The prints shown here are linocuts with some woodcut elements as well. There are five images each made with four separate plates measuring 24" x 18". The edition size is twenty. The first ten are bound in an accordion fold book format and numbers eleven through twenty are unbound. The five images are titled Prophet, Tocsin, The King, Sanctimony and Requiem and a quote from The Bacchae accompanies each.
Prophet, "I have come here from the east, veiling my godhead in human form."
Tocsin, "You are a man to make men fear. Fearful will be your end."
The King, "Reports have been brought to me..."
Sanctimony, "This Bacchic arrogance encroaches on us like a rising tide."
Requiem, "I now cover your head, your torn and bloodstained limbs."
Prices
The prints in this series are $500 each. The book of all five prints bound in accordion format is $2000. Please inquire here for more information.
