Joseph and His Brothers XII 1966

Here we have Peter Lipman-Wulf's intaglio print, a blue-tinted visual poem where images and words entwine to evoke the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. I can imagine Lipman-Wulf, lost in the intensity of his work, carefully scratching lines onto the plate, building up these strange, ethereal forms. Look at how the birds swoop down, pecking at the bread with a kind of crazed energy. What does it all mean? What was he thinking? Lipman-Wulf's work is so evocative. With the addition of text he invites us to imagine what the story might have meant to him. Maybe this is the way his mind works, with images and words fighting it out on the page. It reminds me of work by Dove Bradshaw, who also combines image and text, creating something new out of the conversation. Artists are always in conversation with each other, a constant push and pull, across generations, across styles. It’s all part of the messy, beautiful process of making art.