Octavia McBride-Ahebee: Tattooed Man by Billy Morrow Jackson; Remembering Our Girls

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Tattooed Man by Billy Morrow Jackson; Remembering Our Girls

Billy Morrow Jackson, artist

This piece of artwork is arresting and bold and so thoughtful. The following is a description of this piece written for the Archives of American Art:

“The Tattooed Man of course is Uncle Sam (the U.S. of A.). The tattoos are events and symbols indelibly pressed on the conscience of all the Americans so that even when or if these ills are remedied, the stigma, the history cannot be removed; stamped there as much by apathy as by atrocity. The children are the little girls killed in Birmingham; Nacirema (American spelled backwards) on the raised forearm of Uncle Sam is the name of the bomber society in the South.”

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/images/detail/tattooed-man-8513

2 comments:

AnonymousSeptember 15, 2012 at 2:04 PM
Octavia, what an amazing, powerful piece of art. Where did you first come across it?
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Ms. JacksonMarch 3, 2014 at 1:00 AM
This was one in a series of 8 civil rights protest drawings by Billy Morrow Jackson during the turbulent 60's.
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Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Words without Borders; The Home of International Literature

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Tattooed Man by Billy Morrow Jackson; Remembering Our Girls

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