Existing comment:
A Millennium Story
1999
Etching and Aquatint, Edition 8/10
Oliphant's executive summary of the twentieth century is depicted here in a series of snapshot episodes from the sublime, to the horrific, to the ridiculous. Underlying the comic gag of a modern-shape Rip Van Winkle, Oliphant positions the very serious question of whether humanity ever will fully comprehend or learn from history.
A Millennium Story
In the fall of 1900, Rip Van Winkle Jr. went to sleep in the forest.
And woke up again 100 years alter
Christ! The time!
I've missed everything!
Every goddam thing!!
I missed the Great Depression
Rock soup
I missed two world wars, one cold war, and Korea and Vietnam.
"From the President of the United States, Greetings!"
I missed the coming of nuclear weapons
What th' hell was that?
I missed Richard Nixon.
I missed the sexual revolution.
Bend over.
I even missed John Wayne saying this...
Fill ya hands, ya sunza bitches!
I missed the lunar expeditions.
Oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when that Armstrong kid next door walks on the moon!
And I missed the development of the automobile and the airplane and computers...
That was one helluva century
And I msised it.
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