The Plague 1963

John Hultberg made this print, called ‘The Plague,’ with brown ink. The ink is quite thin, like a wash almost. You get the impression that Hultberg poured it on and moved it around. The top half of the print is a field of splattered texture, punctuated by a few streaks of light. This is connected to the lower half by a dark horizon line, below which chaos ensues in the form of houses, figures and objects scattered across the page. Everything is fragmented and nothing quite connects – it's a kind of semi-abstract nightmare space. One motif that sticks out is the ghostly figure, wide-eyed and hollow, that appears to be floating amongst the wreckage. This echoes the kinds of images we see in Philip Guston’s later paintings, where cartoonish figures are used to contemplate catastrophe. Art can feel very prophetic and I wonder if Hultberg tapped into a future feeling.