Floor 6: 6th Floor City Gallery (exiting Stairway)
Overview
Gallery Wayfinding
You are in the 6th Floor City Gallery. This is a long, narrow gallery with three large windows on the back wall—one large window on the left end, one in the middle, and one on the right end—that look out to the rows of high-rise buildings in downtown San Francisco.
You've entered from the middle-right of the back wall of this wide rectangular gallery, facing the long front wall. This wall in front of you is painted a deep charcoal gray, creating a contemplative atmosphere. The wall behind you is painted white.
This gallery spans the entire length of the main galleries behind you.
Immediately in front of you, on the front wall, is the entrance to the Traces of History Gallery. There are benches on the wall to the right of that entrance. Behind you, there is a sculpture by Cy Twombly. Immediately to your right, on the back wall, is a media piece by Bill Viola and four prints by Jasper Johns.
Further down the gallery to the left, on the front wall is a seating area with tablets with a selection of poems. To listen to a poem, select on the touchscreen and pick up the listening device nearby. At the left end of the gallery, on the front wall, there is an entrance to the William Kentridge Gallery.
To get to the 6th floor tactile map, or to visit the 5th floor, go right down this gallery to the end and turn left. The 6th floor tactile map will be on the wall to your left. The elevators are on the opposite wall across from tactile map.
Note to visitors: If this is the beginning of your journey on the 6th Floor, you might be starting halfway through the exhibition. To find the start of the exhibition, continue right toward to the end of the City Gallery. The 6th Floor Tactile Map is on the 6th Floor landing, on the wall across from the elevators.
Label
"History does not exist in an objective manner. It is purely subjective. . . . What does the artist do? He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos. . . . History speaks to artists. It changes the artist’s thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images."
—Anselm Kiefer, 2011
"You cannot arrest the present. You just have to abandon every day your past. And accept it. And if you can’t accept it, then you have to do sculpture! . . . . If your need is to refuse to abandon the past, then you have to re-create it. Which is what I have been doing."
—Louise Bourgeois, 1994
"You know, one shifts—I do—backwards and forwards. Sometimes I think I'm part of this world of today. Sometimes I feel that maybe I belong in history or in prehistory, or that there's no such thing as time. . . . If you [can] escape from that time constraint, then the whole world . . . is someplace where you belong."
—Isamu Noguchi
Label
In many of his paintings, postwar German artist Anslem Kiefer is creating a dialogue with the poetry of Holocaust survivor Paul Celan. Now considered one of the greatest 20th-century poets of the German language, Celan experienced the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, having been forced to work at one and having lost his parents at another. The poem for which he is probably most famous, Todesfuge (Death Fugue), made a lasting impression on Kiefer, who was born in Germany not long before the end of the second world war.
In the words of Anselm Kiefer: "Celan does not merely contemplate nothingness; he has experienced it, lived through it." Kiefer goes even further and affirms that "only poems are real … [They are] matter in the abyss of antimatter."
In hopes to expand on this dialogue that Kiefer started with Celan, we invite you to listen to Todesfuge alongside a selection of other poems by contemporary poets exploring memory, grief, resilience, and joy of our current era—from across the country and around the world.
Related Media
Transcript
Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken und trinken
wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er schreibt es und tritt vor das Haus und es blitzen die Sterne er pfeift seine Rüden herbei
er pfeift seine Juden hervor läßt schaufeln ein Grab in der Erde
er befiehlt uns spielt auf nun zum Tanz
Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich morgens und mittags wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng
Er ruft stecht tiefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andern singet und spielt
er greift nach dem Eisen im Gurt er schwingts seine Augen sind blau
stecht tiefer die Spaten ihr einen ihr andern spielt weiter zum Tanz auf
Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen
Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft
dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng
Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith
Transcript
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at dusk
we drink it at noon in mornings we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we dig a grave in the sky there is plenty of room
A man lives in the house he plays with his snakes he writes
he writes when it darkens in Deutschland your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and steps outside of the house and the strike of the stars he whistles his hounds
he whistles his Jews dig a grave in the ground
he commands us strike up for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you in mornings and midday we drink you at dusk
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his snakes he writes
he writes when it darkens in Deutschland your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith we dig a grave in the sky there is plenty of room
He shouts you there dig deeper the rest of you sing you others play on
he raises the rod from his belt his eyes are blue
drive the spade deeper the rest of you sing you others play on for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and mornings we drink you at dusk
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith he plays with his snakes
He shouts make death sound sweeter death is a Master from Deutschland
he shouts strike the violin darker then rise as smoke in the air
then a grave in the clouds there is so much more room
Black milk of mornings we drink you at night
we drink you at midday death is a Master from Deutschland
we drink you at dusk in mornings we drink and drink
death is a Master from Deutschland his eye is blue
his lead bullets strike you his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he whistles his hounds he grants us graves in the sky
he plays with his snakes and he dreams death is a Master aus Deutschland
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith
Transcript
Because the butterfly’s yellow wing
flickering in black mud
was a word
stranded by its language.
Because no one else
was coming — & I ran
out of reasons.
So I gathered fistfuls
of ash, dark as ink,
hammered them
into marrow, into
a skull thick
enough to keep
the gentle curse
of dreams. Yes, I aimed
for mercy —
but came only close
as building a cage
around the heart. Shutters
over the eyes. Yes,
I gave it hands
despite knowing
that to stretch that clay slab
into five blades of light,
I would go
too far. Because I, too,
needed a place
to hold me. So I dipped
my fingers back
into the fire, pried open
the lower face
until the wound widened
into a throat,
until every leaf shook silver
with that god
-awful scream
& I was done.
& it was human.
Transcript
On the mud-spattered steps
of Kabul’s blue mosque, a pomegranate half
vibrates with worms.
God has no clock
but the muezzin’s song,
which veils the city’s vascular glass
and dilapidated buildings
each fifth hour—it must.
Evenings, I rinse from my face
the city’s grime, its fried oils.
My eyelashes sweep, then blacken, like battery grease,
the handkerchief of time
until I see new again. In the night markets, fruit
clings to soft rain, fish with eyes like milk warm
the ice. Each apple wears, for a moment, your face—
I lost you. I lose you again. By my want,
its incessantness, I’m mystified,
as by the city’s graffiti, this native grief
I cannot read. Before you left me, we held each other
in the American hotel overlooking
this landlocked relief, our bodies exuding summer,
a halo of insects lighting up the balcony—amid the ruins
of the neighboring roof, one could see
two children sleep, like children,
on the white wood of a dismantled door.
Transcript
Genghis Khan, my father says, using a soft G,
Never saw our peninsula with his own eyes.
Don’t quote me on that—
Recall isn’t my strong suit. I’ve convinced myself
Memorizing dates, for example, is outmoded.
Better to learn the overall movements,
Social conventions rising and falling,
Empires and their changing mascots.
Genghis sired so many, they say, his children’s
Children’s children’s genes sowed an entire
Continent of grasslands. If you press your ear
To my blood’s topography, you’ll hear hooves
Pounding, though I can’t remember when it started, or
Whose king it is coming in the distance.
Transcript
A man celebrates erstwhile conquests,
his book locked in a silo, still in print.
I scribble, make Sharpie lines, deface
its text like it defaces me. Outside, grain
fields whisper. Marble lions are silent
yet silver-tongued, with excellent teeth.
In this life I have worshipped so many lies.
Then I workshop them, make them better.
An East India Company, an opium trade,
a war, a treaty, a concession, an occupation,
a man parting the veil covering a woman’s
face, his nails prying her lips open. I love
the fragility of a porcelain bowl. How easy
it is, to shatter chinoiserie, like the Han
dynasty urn Ai Weiwei dropped in 1995.
If only recovering the silenced history
is as simple as smashing its container: book,
bowl, celadon spoon. Such objects cross
borders the way our bodies never could.
Instead, we’re left with history, its blonde
dust. That bowl is unbreakable. All its ghosts
still shudder through us like small breaths.
The tome of hegemony lives on, circulates
in our libraries, in our bloodstreams. One day,
a girl like me may come across it on a shelf,
pick it up, read about all the ways her body
is a thing. And I won’t be there to protect
her, to cross the text out and say: go ahead—
rewrite this.
Transcript
dear reader, with our heels digging into the good
mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something
about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself
but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown
& lord knows I have been called by what I look like
more than I have been called by what I actually am &
I wish to return the favor for the purpose of this
exercise. which, too, is an attempt at fashioning
something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything
worthwhile of their burial. size me up & skip whatever semantics arrive
to the tongue first. say: that boy he look like a hollowed-out grandfather
clock. he look like a million-dollar god with a two-cent
heaven. like all it takes is one kiss & before morning,
you could scatter his whole mind across a field.
Transcript
“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”—“shooting star”—
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.
Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?
Transcript
i pledge allegiance to my
homies to my mother’s
small & cool palms to
the gap between my brother’s
two front teeth & to
my grandmother’s good brown
hands good strong brown
hands gathering my bare feet
in her lap
i pledge allegiance to the
group text i pledge allegiance
to laughter & to all the boys
i have a crush on i pledge
allegiance to my spearmint plant
to my split ends to my grandfather’s
brain & gray left eye
i come from two failed countries
& i give them back i pledge
allegiance to no land no border
cut by force to draw blood i pledge
allegiance to no government no
collection of white men carving up
the map with their pens
i choose the table at the waffle house
with all my loved ones crowded
into the booth i choose the shining
dark of our faces through a thin sheet
of smoke glowing dark of our faces
slick under layers of sweat i choose
the world we make with our living
refusing to be unmade by what surrounds
us i choose us gathered at the lakeside
the light glinting off the water & our
laughing teeth & along the living
dark of our hair & this is my only country
Transcript
The redwoods are on fire in California. A floor submerges a neighborhood that sat quiet on the coast for three centuries. A child takes their first steps and tumbles into a father’s arms. Two people in New Orleans fall in love under an oak tree whose branches bend like sorrow. A forest of seeds are planted in new soil. A glacier melts into the ocean and the sea climbs closer to the land. A man comes home from war and holds his son for the first time. A man is killed by a drone that thinks his jug of water is a bomb. Your best friend relapses and isn’t picking up the phone. Your son’s teacher calls to say he stood up for another boy in class. A country below the equator ends a twenty-year civil war. A soldier across the Atlantic fires the shot that begins another. The scientists find a vaccine that will save millions of people’s lives. Your mother’s cancer has returned and the doctors say there is nothing else they can do. There is a funeral procession in the morning and a wedding in the afternoon. The river that gives us water to drink is the same one that might wash us away.
Transcript
- Who are you and whom do you love?
- Where did you come from / how did you arrive?
- How will you begin?
- How will you live now?
- What is the shape of your body?
- Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?
- What do you remember about the earth?
- What are the consequences of silence?
- Tell me what you know about dismemberment.
- Describe a morning you woke without fear.
- How will you / have you prepare(d) for your death?
- And what would you say if you could?
Label
Paul Celan was a Romanian-born poet who, though he never lived in Germany, gave the post-World War II literature of that country one of its most powerful and regenerative voices. His poetry was influenced stylistically by French Surrealism, and its subject matter by his grief as a Jew and a Holocaust survivor. His most well-known poem, "Todesfuge," often translated as "Death Fugue," memorializes life in a Nazi concentration camp and hauntingly refers to death as “a Master from Deutschland."
"Todesfuge" (Death Fugue) was first published in a Romanian translation titled "Tangoul Mortii" ("Tango of Death") in 1947. The original German version first appeared in print in 1948 in the Vienna publication Der Sand aus den Urnen.
Dean Rader is a poet, translator, art writer, scholar, and critic who has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indigenous studies, modern and contemporary art, and visual culture. He has authored or co-authored thirteen books. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial Award for a First Book of poems, and won the 2010 Writer's League of Texas Poetry Prize. His follow-up book, Landscape Portrait Figure Form (Omnidawn), was named by the Barnes & Noble Review as one of the Best Poetry Books of 2013. Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry (Copper Canyon Press) was published in 2017 and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and the Northern California Book Award.
This English translation of "Todesfuge" originally appeared in Poetry, October 2023.
Ocean Vuong is a writer, professor, and photographer. He is the author of the novels On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and The Emperor of Gladness. A nominee for the National Book Award and a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the author of the poetry collections, Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time is a Mother. Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he currently splits his time between Western Massachusetts and New York City, where he serves as a Professor in Modern Poetry and Poetics in the MFA Program at NYU.
"Essay on Craft" was first published in Poetry (their July/August 2017 issue).
Aria Aber was born and raised in Germany and now lives in the United States. She is the author of the poetry collection Hard Damage (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) and the novel _GOOD GIRL _(Hogarth, 2025), which is being translated into nine languages. She is the winner of a Whiting Award, a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Ron Wallace Fellowship from the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and the Writers in Public Schools fellowship from NYU. _GOOD GIRL _was nominated for the Women’s Prize in Fiction, the New Adult Prize, and the Center of Fiction’s Debut Prize. It’s also currently on the longlist of the Dublin Literary Award. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New Republic, Granta, the Yale Review, and elsewhere.
"Notes from the Ruined City" first appeared in the New Yorker, May 3rd, 2021.
Franny Choi is a queer, Korean American writer of poems, essays, and more. Their most recent book is The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco, 2022), an NPR 2022 Books We Love and a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Their previous book, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019), was a Rumpus and Paris Review staff pick. They also co-edited the anthology _We the Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, _and _Spoken Word, _alongside Bao Phi, No'u Revilla, and Terisa Siagatonu. Choi is the Founder of Brew & Forge, a project connecting writers with social justice movements, and is currently faculty in Literature at Bennington College.
"Hangul Abecedarian" first appeared in Poetry, December 2019.
Sally Wen Mao is the author of the short story collection_ Ninetails: Nine Tales_ (Penguin Books, May 2024). She is also the author of three books of poetry: The Kingdom of Surfaces (Graywolf, 2023), a finalist for the Maya Angelou Book Award, _Oculus _(Graywolf Press, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry, and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). Her work draws from the interstices of art, technology, history, and mythology. Mao has collaborated with museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, and the Reeves Museum of Ceramics, among others. The recipient of a 2021 NEA grant, a Cullman fellowship, a Shearing fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes, Mao is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Baruch College-CUNY.
"Occidentalism" was first published in _Crazyhorse _(now Swamp Pink) in spring 2017. It is a poem from Oculus (Graywolf Press, 2019).
Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His newest release, _There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension _(Random House, 2024) was a _New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. _His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.
"How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This" was first published in Poem-a-Day on July 4, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American writer, editor and educator who has been Young People’s Poet Laureate for the U.S. (Poetry Foundation), poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine, and The Texas Observer, and a visiting writer in hundreds of schools and communities all over the world. Her books include Grace Notes (Poems About Families), Everything Comes Next, The Tiny Journalist, Voices in the Air, Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, the Turtle of Oman, The Turtle of Michigan, This Same Sky, & The Tree is Older than You Are: Poems & Paintings from Mexico. She has received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Texas Writer Award 2024, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Texas Institute of Letters, the Arab American National Museum, and the National Book Critics Circle.
"Blood" was first printed in Yellow Glove, Breitenbush Books, Oregon, 1986.
Safia Elhillo is the author of Girls That Never Die, The January Children, Home Is Not a Country, and Bright Red Fruit, and co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem and Stanford University, and her awards include a California Book Award, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and an Arab American Book Award. She has been a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Kirkus Prize and the LA Times Book Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Penguin Book of Migration Literature and The New Yorker, among others. Sudanese by way of Washington D.C., she now lives in Los Angeles, where she is a co-poetry editor at Callaloo and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University.
"Self Portrait with No Flag" was first published in Smartish Pace issue 24, January 2017.
Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and selected by the _New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. How the Word Is Passed (Adapted for Young Readers), _with Sonja Cherry-Paul, will be published in September 2025 (Little, Brown). He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground as well as the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
“All at Once” first appeared in Above Ground (Little, Brown and Company, 2023).
Bhanu Kapil is a British-American poet, born in London to parents from India. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is the author of a number of full-length collections, including _How To Wash A Heart _(Liverpool University Press) and _Incubation: a space for monsters _(Kelsey Street Press). The recipient of the TS Eliot Prize, a Windham-Campbell Prize, the 16th International Poetry and People Prize, a Cholmondeley Award, and the Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellowship (Faculty of English, University of Cambridge), Kapil is now an Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College. For the last six years, she has been collaborating with Blue Pieta, a choreographer, dramaturg and performer. A performance score, written with Blue Pieta, is forthcoming in _The Glass Mosque _(Minerva Projects).
“Twelve Questions” first appeared in The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001).
Objects
3 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Artwork Label Text
2001
Bronze
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2002
Visual Description
This bronze sculpture features a stacked, boxy base and a vertical element rising up about a foot higher than a tall adult. The sculpture is unified by a dark, weathered surface, with mottled blacks and deep browns. The foundation is a large, rectangular block that is similar in size to a side table. It appears to have been cast from a wooden crate with horizontal planks along its sides; the bronze surface captures the planks' wood grain, scuffs, and uneven edges.
A slightly overhanging, thin lid—likewise cast from an element composed of individual planks—sits on top of this boxy form, slightly lifted away from the base on all sides. Centered on the lid is a much smaller cube, about six inches tall, six inches deep, and eight inches wide. Resting atop that is an even smaller cube measuring roughly four inches in height, width, and depth. Both cubes also have a wood-grain texture.
Connecting to and rising above from the topmost cube are two long, thin rods, both almost three feet in length. One has a square profile and extends straight up, bending at a right angle at its very top. The other, which runs roughly parallel to it, is cylindrical and contains a series of waves along its length. It also slightly bows out, away from the first rod, before curving back to meet it at the top. The entire sculpture is set on a white, curved museum platform.
Artwork Label Text
2000
Single-channel video, silent, 20 min.
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2000
With its silence, dramatic lighting, and extreme slow motion, this video might at first glance be mistaken for a painting. Viola presents us with a composite of six different videos of a single actor portraying a progression of intense emotional states: joy, sorrow, anger, fear, awe, and dreaming. Six Heads recalls Old Master (European artists from 1300–1800) studies for heads combined on a single sheet or canvas. Unlike a drawing or painting, video can capture the minute transformations that occur as one emotion transitions into the next.
Visual Description
[Video and audio description forthcoming]
Artwork Label Text
1987
Etchings with aquatint, ed. 56/73
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1990
Johns engages in the long tradition of depicting the four seasons as an allegory for the stages of human life, from youth (spring) through adulthood (summer), maturity (autumn), and, finally, old age and death (winter). In each panel, we see the repeated figure of the artist, which Johns based on a tracing of his shadow. They appear alongside a circle with the imprint of an arm and hand that swivels like a clock, marking the progression of time. The works are densely layered with references to Johns's past artworks and those of earlier painters, from the German Renaissance artist Matthias Grünewald to Pablo Picasso.
Visual Description
Four separate color etchings, each about two-feet-tall-by-one-and-a-half feet wide, are shown together in one horizontal row of four. Starting from your left, the etchings are titled Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Across all etchings, pale gray human silhouettes recur amid fragmented, collage-like interiors and objects, with diagonal tilts and overlapping planes. A large dark circular form (a partial circle, cropped at its center line and intended to resemble a clock face) also appears in all panels. The partial circles all contain both a white circular arrow as well as a white human arm and handprint (intended to represent the clock’s "hand").
Starting on your left, in the far-left etching (Spring), a bluish-gray upright figure cropped at the thigh occupies the center, tilting to the left and partially veiled by diagonal hatch marks that resemble sheets of rain. A beige background is behind the figure, along with one leafless tree branch arcing above the figure's head. Surrounding the beige background is a light blue sky dotted with yellow stars. Behind and around the figure are black and white shapes that represent ambiguous figures or optical illusions—depending on the viewer's interpretation, the same figure can look either like two faces in profile, or a vase. Another image on the left side of the panel, depending on the viewer's interpretation, can resemble either a pale yellow duck or a rabbit. Near the bottom center sits another figure drawing—a shadowy, child-size form beneath simple line drawings of circles, triangles, and diamonds. This contrasts the larger silhouette of the figure above. In the lower left corner, the dark circular motif appears. It contains a white arm and handprint, which reaches up toward the top of the drawing from the center of the partial circle. The white circular arrow traces the outline of the dark partial circle in a counter-clockwise direction and points to the right.
Moving across the row to your right, in the left-center etching (Summer), a tall gray figure stands left of center against a mint-green background that contains white, slightly offset gridded lines that resemble bricks. Above the figure, there is a single branch with green leaves on it. To the right, an angled collage of small images—a yellow seahorse, two US flags stacked vertically, several dark gray vases or containers, and a red-and-white drawing of the Mona Lisa—leans diagonally and is intended to reference the artist's past work and greater artistic influences. Above that, small yellow star-like shapes dot a pale blue sky. The dark circular form appears at the lower right edge. The white arm and handprint extends from the right side into the circular form into its center, reaching to the left. The white circular arrow traces the outline of the circle in a counter-clockwise direction and points to the right.
In the right-center etching (Fall), two pale gray upright figures tilting slightly to the left flank the composition—one at the far-left edge and another at the far right. The backgrounds behind the figures are both beige and resemble planks of wood with visible wood grain. The figure on the left is cropped at the neck and vertical midline, so only the right side of the body is visible. The figure on the right is cropped at the neck and midline, so only the left side of the body is visible. The figures create a framing for a central concentration of objects and shapes. At the top of this central portion, there is a blue sky with white stars and a tightly packed assemblage of squares, circles, and triangles. In the center, there is a rectangle split vertically down the middle; on the left, there is a beige geometric shape. On the right, there is a black square with the letters "Chute de Glace." Below that are purple- and green-striped geometric forms. Near the bottom right side of the central composition, the large dark circular disc appears. In this panel, the white arm and handprint extends from the center of the circular form and reaches down and to the left. The white circular arrow traces the outline of the circle in a counter-clockwise direction and points down to the bottom edge of the panel.
In the far-right etching (Winter), a pale gray upright figure cropped at the mid-shin is positioned on the right side of the panel. The figure tilts slightly to the left. The background behind the figure is a mix of speckled gray and white with the same offset grid lines intended to resemble bricks. Beneath the figure, there are three simple gray geometric shapes in a horizontal row at the bottom of the panel: a circle, a triangle, and a square. The entire vertical field is peppered with many small white dots, intended to represent snowflakes. On the left side of the panel, at the top, is a pale blue sky with simple line star shapes and blue dots. Beneath that, there are stacked brown forms that resemble chair legs, as well as a black rectangle that contains the white outline of a snowman. In the lower left corner, the black circular motif appears. The white arm and handprint extends from the center of the circular form and reaches straight down to the bottom of the panel. The partial circle also contains the white circular arrow that traces the outline of the circle clockwise from the right side and points to the left.
Each etching is surrounded by a white mat and set in a metal frame.