H. C. Westermann
H. C. Westermann, Arctic Death Ship, from the portfolio: The Connecticut Ballroom. 1975, three-color on Natsume wove paper. The H. C. Westermann Study Collection, Gift of the Estate of Joanna Beall Westermann, Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 2002.238.
H. C. Westermann, Deserted Airport N.M., from the portfolio: The Connecticut Ballroom. 1975, four-color woodcut on Natsume wove paper. The H. C. Westermann Study Collection, Gift of the Estate of Joanna Beall Westermann, Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 2002.241.
H. C. Westermann’s haunting woodblock prints confront us with two landscapes in the aftermath of an unspecified disaster. The artist’s fastidious craftsmanship can be observed in his attention to materials, most notable in the strategic use of wood grain to suggest stratification in the rock formations of Deserted Airport N.M. These extreme landscapes—characterized by breaking ice and desert ruins—suggest an environmental precarity. A veteran of both World War II and the Korean War, Westermann was intimately familiar with the brutality of war and frequently incorporated the Death Ship motif–seen here caught against a large glacier–into his work. The artist’s distinctly sardonic, graphic style lends a wry humor to otherwise desolate scenes. Devoid of human figures, the works convey a sense of post-apocalyptic catastrophe that acquires new resonance under the looming shadow of today’s climate emergency.
— Sabrina Cunningham