About this artwork
This is probably Kitaj's best-known and most complex work. The artist stated that the painting related to T S Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land'; the poet is depicted at the bottom left, wearing a hearing aid. The building in the top left corner is the gatehouse to Auschwitz. Below it lies a scene of cultural disintegration and moral collapse. The stagnant water, the dead and blackened trees, and the books scattered about the landscape, speak of death and destruction. A Matisse bust (coincidentally a variant of the one owned by the gallery) lies broken in the centre foreground. The small figure of the man in bed, holding a baby, is a self-portrait.
Updated before 2020
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artist:
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title:If Not, Not
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date created:1975 - 1976
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materials:Oil and black chalk on canvas
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measurements:152.40 x 152.40 cm; Framed: 170.50 x 170.00 x 10.00 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Purchased 1976
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accession number:GMA 1585
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gallery:
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subject:
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glossary:
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artwork photographed by:Antonia Reeve
Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Ronald Brooks Kitaj
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Kitaj settled in Britain in 1957. He had previously studied at art schools in New York and Vienna and, after serving with the army in Germany, came to England on a G.I. Scholarship to study in Oxford and at the Royal College of Art, London. At a time when abstract art was...