Knowledge Bank

Variant Dates: 1971, 1972.

Medium: Lithograph and etching.

Print Image Size: 16 x 19 7/8 inches.

Print Edition: no edition (with 10 artist's proofs).

Alternate Medium: Offset photolithograph with three-plate color etching.

Ink(s): black (lithograph); black, red, grey (etching).

Support: Hammermill wove paper.

Half-length etched portrait of Allen Ginsberg in an Uncle Sam hat surrounded by multiple close-ups of Richard Nixon's laughing face, taken from a newspaper photograph, with text that reads "special factory purchase, assembled, tested, and guaranteed. Nose test of spectacle and song! The epic American, fly away into a wonderland." Another portrait of Ginsberg at the bottom looks in the direction of a pig-faced individual who says "We can't make you look this good, but we'll try." The most noticeable headline though reads "As American as mom, apple pie, as American as the flag, mom, and poverty." Other headlines advertise a "special offer: it's humor, it's heros, it's stories, it's visions, it's weirdness, it's joys" as well as news that a "farmer is killed by bull, a special brood cow." It is similar to another version [CMA 2001.034.204] with the same title.