Calla Lily 1960 - 1970

Editor: This is Leonard Baskin's "Calla Lily," an etching printed sometime between 1960 and 1970. It's just... fragile, somehow. Delicate lines make up the whole image. It looks almost like a nervous system diagram. What’s your read on it? Curator: Fragile is spot on, I think. Baskin was obsessed with mortality, the ephemerality of things. Look at the roots, that dense, chaotic tangle at the base. Doesn't it feel almost… suffocating? Editor: Definitely a contrast to the clean, sparse lines forming the stem and flower. It feels unbalanced. Curator: Precisely. The lily, often a symbol of purity and resurrection, is presented here with an unsettling weight. Baskin often used etching to capture a kind of raw emotional honesty. Notice how the lines are almost trembling in places. What does that evoke for you? Editor: A feeling of instability? Like the flower is struggling to hold itself up? Curator: Or perhaps, more profoundly, life clinging to existence despite the pull of decay? There's a beauty in that tension, a recognition of life's inherent fragility. I think he's playing with these life and death symbols... and a good bit of anxiety? Editor: I didn’t catch all that. Thanks; seeing this in a whole different light now. Curator: Indeed! And now I am too.