Sue Coe
Artist: Sue Coe
Title: Jimmy Carrying Veal
Year Produced: 1991
Medium: Copper plate etching & aquatint
Dimensions: 11” x 6 7/8”
Location: Print Collection
Acquired by President’s Fund for Art Purchases
About the Artist
“An overwrought jumble of colors and images, it [Ship of Fools] has the effect of trivializing tragedy and seems, in its shrillness, almost silly. Coe is most effective when she eschews her soapbox and works from tenderness and compassion. Her gentle, simple sketches of doomed animals, such as the Family of Goats-24 Hrs. From Slaughter-Lancaster Stockyards, say it all.” Carol Diehl, Art News (2)
“Where earlier images tended to explode on impact, these prints burn on a longer, slower fuse....Coe has always been more interested in enlisting supporters than in inspiring ambivalence, but she has succeeded in producing images about things we don’t want to see, in the form of things we do want to look at.” Susan Tallman, Arts Magazine (3)
“My dream is that people don’t discuss the work, but discuss the content.” Sue Coe (4)
In 1996 Sue Coe published a book entitled Dead Meat. This book deals
with the actual production of meat, from egg to chicken, calf to cow to steak,
piglet to pork chop, in all its gory detail. Coe spent over a decade traveling
through North America, visiting slaughterhouses. The resulting work is some
of her most powerful, and touching. Moreover, with the “mad cow” disease of
the U.K., and the continual meat borne e. coli poisonings that occur in the
U.S.A., it is particularly topical and universal.
What distinguishes these works from others is mostly due to the fact
that they were observed and drawn by Coe. Unlike works such as Bobby Sands
and Wall Street, from Dead Meat, the works resulting from sustained observation
of a period of time have the ability to capture and captivate the viewer.
Rather than drawing from her memory, she draws from observation. This
direct observation adds a potency to prints such as the Veal Skinner, a potency
that eludes some of her other works.
Coe’s prints and drawings of her slaughter house visits show more of
an attention to art related matters, such as an exploration of the media,
an engagement with composition that is based on placement of the figures,
and more concern for the so-called formal issues of art making. As well, specific
figures, such as Ronald Reagan and Malcolm X have been put to the side and
replaced with more universal ones. Real people are engaged in the very real
act of killing animals. These people become symbolic. Just as they control
the destiny of the animals, there is the implication that their destiny is
just as controlled and doomed.
Coe has not eschewed her previous style, as the exaggerated blacks within
her figures and the stark isolation of one element against another show, but
developed these elements so that it amplifies the content rather than distracts
from it. Her compositions still show the distortions of place and context
but, due to the observed nature of the drawings, work within the whole.
Jimmy Carrying the Veal exhibits the same union of intent, facility
and content. Rather than having the message presented, the print draws the
viewer in. Once in, though, the viewer must ask what is going on. Because
of Coe’s skill, only certain conclusions can be made. The animals are being
killed to satisfy the public’s taste for flesh and that public is mainly ignorant
and uncaring of the animals’ fate.
Notes
(1) Zeitlin, Marilyn A., Introduction, Heel of the Boot, exhibition brochure,
ASU, Fall 1996
(2) Diehl, Carol, (Art News Associates, N.Y.), September 1996, p. 132
(3) Tallman, Susan, Arts Magazine (Art Digest, Inc., N.Y.), vol. 63, April
1989, p. 22
(4) Coe, Sue, Flash Art International (G. Politi, Milan), May/June 1986, p.
47
Michael Stevenson
Research Assistant
Graduate Student - Painting and Drawing
Fall 1997
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