About the Artwork
Born Burgess Collins, Jess trained as a nuclear chemist and helped develop a process for plutonium production during the Manhattan project. After experiencing a devastating vision of the earth being destroyed by nuclear weapons, he quit his job and enrolled in art school, dropping his surname as he abandoned the bourgeois values of his parents. He also rejected abstract art, preferring to incorporate imagery related to myth, memories, and personal associations in his paintings. The Translations, made between 1959 and 1976, pair found images from Tarot cards, rendered in thick, colored paint, and found text. Suspended in Vacancy is based on a J. Augustus Knapp illustration in John Lloyd's Etidorphia (1895), an occult novel that predicted the end of the earth. The title of Knapp's drawing is stamped into the wet paint below the image, and a quote from Lloyd’s pessimistic revelation is on the verso.
From Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015)
Suspended In Vacancy, He Seemed To Float: Translation #14
1965
JESS
1923 - 2004
American
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Oil on canvas mounted on wood
Unframed: 30 1/4 × 20 inches (76.8 × 50.8 cm) Framed: 33 1/2 × 23 1/4 inches (85.1 × 59.1 cm)
Paintings
Contemporary Art after 1950
Museum Purchase, W. Hawkins Ferry Fund
2006.107
Non-commercial all standard museum
Markings
Signed and dated, lower left of image: JA Knapp 94 [from an illustration by J. Augustus Knapp in Etidorhpa]
Inscribed, center, below image: "Suspended in Vacancy, He Seemed to Float."
Provenance
2006-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)For more information on provenance, please visit:
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Credit Line for Reproduction
Courtesy of Odyssia Skouras
JESS, Suspended In Vacancy, He Seemed To Float: Translation #14, 1965, oil on canvas mounted on wood. Detroit Institute of Arts, Museum Purchase, W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, 2006.107.
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