The Temptation of St. Antony I -XIV

Artist K.O.S. (American, founded 1982)

Artist Tim Rollins (American, 1955 - 2017)

Date1989

DimensionsImage: 8 3/8 x 5 5/16 in. (21.3 x 13.5 cm);
Sheet: 22 1/8 x 14 15/16 in. (56.2 x 37.9 cm)

MediumPortfolio of 14 etchings with spitbite, aquatint and toner aquatint on xerograph, with chine colle.

ClassificationPrints

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1990.56A-O

Not on View

Label Text“Art is most important to us as a means of knowledge of this world. […] It's not just producing objects, but producing a form of critical thinking about the world.” —Tim Rollins As a teacher in a South Bronx middle school in the 1980s, Tim Rollins combined literature and art in his classes. Rollins who is white, formed a collaborative artists’ group with some of his students—mostly kids of color—who named themselves K.O.S., or Kids of Survival. For this portfolio of prints, Rollins and K.O.S. used photocopies of the pages of French writer Gustave Flaubert’s surreal 1874 novel Temptation of St. Antony as their “canvas.” Exploring their personal responses to the story of a hermit monk tempted by hallucinogenic visitations to abandon his faith, they also responded to the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s—when New York City, like Antony, was tormented by temptation and fear. The AIDS virus, St. Antony’s role as patron saint of disease, and the novel’s musings on the microscopic world come together in the forms resembling microorganisms.