{"data":{"id":"8341","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":8341,"topgoose_id":11509,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":8341,"title":"\"Handing Me One of the Halves, He Spoke the Single Word, Drink\": Translation #23","display_artist_text":"Jess","display_date":"1969","accession_number":"93.20","dimensions":"Overall: 29 7/8 × 20 in. (75.9 × 50.8 cm)","medium":"Enamel on canvas mounted on wood","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from the Mrs. Percy Uris Purchase Fund, Mrs. Laila Twigg-Smith, Dr. Jack Chachkes, the John I. H. Baur Purchase Fund, the Wilfred P. and Rose J. Cohen Purchase Fund, the Julia B. Engel Purchase Fund and gift of Odyssia Skouras","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eJess, \u003cem\u003e\"Handing Me One of the Halves, He Spoke the Single Word, Drink\": Translation #23\u003c/em\u003e, 1969. Enamel on canvas mounted on wood, overall: 29 7/8 × 20 in. (75.9 × 50.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Mrs. Percy Uris Purchase Fund, Mrs. Laila Twigg-Smith, Dr. Jack Chachkes, the John I. H. Baur Purchase Fund, the Wilfred P. and Rose J. Cohen Purchase Fund, the Julia B. Engel Purchase Fund and gift of Odyssia Skouras 93.20. ©The Jess Collins Trust\u003cbr\u003eReproduced with permission\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eBetween 1959 and 1976, Jess produced a series of thirty-two works entitled \u003ci\u003eTranslations\u003c/i\u003e. These works, he explained, “translated nineteenth-century images through time to the present.” Their sources, like much of the artist’s work, were reproductions from his large, disparate archive of black-and-white book and magazine illustrations, postcards, and old photographs. \u003ci\u003e“Handing Me One of the Halves He Spoke the Single Word, Drink”: Translation #23\u003c/i\u003e is based on an illustration by J. Augustus Knapp found in John Uri Lloyd’s 1894 book \u003ci\u003eEtidorpha, or the End of the Earth\u003c/i\u003e. Jess copied the image onto canvas with a pencil and then painted it in a heavily impastoed, paint-by-numbers style, filling in the original black-and-white illustration with an assortment of lush greens. The text on the back of the painting, also from Lloyd’s book, concerns time, eternity, and the human soul.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"An older man offering a cup to a pale figure amid large green fungi.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T16:52:48.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T12:00:38.542-05:00","images":[{"id":99619,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/8341/93_20_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"2644","type":"artist"}]}}}}