Plate Twelve: Sadistic Impulse

Work on Paper

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The Art & History Museums of Maitland

The artwork by John Hawkins features an abstract composition with a surreal blend of geometric shapes and organic forms; a central figure appears to intertwine with sharp, spine-like elements, while spherical objects, including a ringed planet, float in the surrounding space, creating a sense of cosmic exploration.

The artwork by John Hawkins features an abstract composition with a surreal blend of geometric shapes and organic forms; a central figure appears to intertwine with sharp, spine-like elements, while spherical objects, including a ringed planet, float in the surrounding space, creating a sense of cosmic exploration.

Name/Title

Plate Twelve: Sadistic Impulse

Entry/Object ID

1993.002.023.16A

Description

Compensation for military enslavement: the viscera of carnage. . .the enemy is everywhere. . .make them suffer, too -- only more . . .let them cry out in agony. . .there is now no hope for anyone.

Artwork Details

Medium

Offset Lithograph

Series

The Psychoses of War (1943)

Context

Studies of social derangement: Seventeen drawings by John Franklin Hawkins with an Introduction and notes by John Howard Birss. Introduction: The Psychoses of War present pictorially those doctrines which affirm that the way to the good life is secured through material and physical acquisition, regulation, and domination. Although these doctrines make their early pleas under the guise of righteousness, they lead to a denial of the humanitarian spirit. They are a fatal process, for such delusions contain the beginnings of their own dissolution. Toward an awareness of the mental domain in this war, the seventeen studies following analyse the hidden, subtle motivations and mental pathologies which bring about the deterioration and ultimate self-destruction of such delusive, false idealism. The visualization of the abstract aspects of this insidious world-malignancy provides a document for uncovering the recesses of foul savagery. This pictorializing is in multiple arrangements of basic forms, rhythmic line, and dimensional relation -- with a kind of shorthand anatomy concentrating on the focal points of nerve centers. These manifest the mental retrogression which would drag us back to primordial ways. To realize the substratal, radical derivations of these falsities will help toward an understanding of how to win -- and to secure -- the peace. - John Howard Birss

Collection

Bok Fellows

Cataloged By

Katie Benson

Acquisition

Accession

1993.002

Source or Donor

Vincent A. Rapetti

Acquisition Method

Gift

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. V Rapetti to the permanent collection

Made/Created

Artist Information

Artist

John Hawkins

Role

Media Artist

Date made

circa 1943

Exhibition

US

Interpretative Labels

Label Type

Artist Commentary

Label

Sadistic Impulse: Compensation for military enslavement: The viscera of carnage. . .the enemy is everywhere. . .make them suffer, too -- only more. . .let them cry out in agony. . .there is now no hope for anyone