Lincoln at Ford's Theater 1973

Warrington Colescott made this print of Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, and it looks like he did it with a pen. You can see all the cross-hatching and the nervous lines searching for a form. I can imagine Colescott hunched over this plate, his hand moving quickly, trying to get all this chaos down. There's Booth up in the box as a literal pig, while down below, dancers contort themselves in ways that suggest they’re dancing on the stage and on the edge of history. It feels like Colescott is thinking about the grotesque nature of the event, the way that tragedy and farce can sometimes feel like two sides of the same coin. I love the way he doesn’t try to clean it up or make it pretty. It’s like he’s saying, “Here’s what it was like, a mess of bodies and motivations, all crashing together.” And you know, that's what painting is too, right? It's never just one thing; it’s always a bunch of different impulses and ideas all bumping up against each other.