Existing comment:
William Weege
born Milwaukee, WI 1935
Napalm, from the portfolio Peace is Patriotic
1967
offset lithograph
Courtesy of the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago
Weege initially created Napalm as part of a limited-edition portfolio of twenty-five prints entitled Peace is Patriotic while a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. This and other individual plates from the series were later mass-produced as posters. The body is a recurring motif throughout Peace is Patriotic and the unsurprising focus of a print entitled Napalm. A long-burning and tenaciously sticky gel used by the United States in flamethrowers and bombs in Vietnam, napalm was notorious for inflicting agonizing disfigurement and death on its often indiscriminate victims. Here, Weege jarringly juxtaposes a voluptuous pinup, a line of cavalry, and anatomical diagrams with an image of a person horrifically scarred by napalm wounds. |