Figure and Skulls

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

American artist Lynd Ward created this image for the book Now That the Gods Are Dead by Llewelyn Powys, published by Equinox Press in 1932. Here, a nude man kneels on a hill and examines one of seven human skulls. In the background are five gravestones in front of a church with a Gothic-style portal and steeply pitched roof. A full moon is visible behind clouds. In the passage that inspired this picture, Ward writes: "Dead, dead, dead, all dead, utterly forgotten... I have but to think of the congregation in the village church of my home as it used to be, Sunday after Sunday... My time would [now] be fully occupied in counting the skulls now under the ground." Ward's woodcuts blend stylistic and technical elements from the Northern Renaissance, the German expressionists, Art Deco, and American social realism. Their graphic quality confers a special urgency to the matters of social and spiritual progress held dear by the artist.

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