“Untitled” (America) | Art & Artists

Diptych is a self-portrait in which Marisol used her own body directly in the printing process. Her method was inspired by the nineteenth-century Japanese tradition of gyotaku, a process in which fish were inked and pressed onto paper to record prized catches. She also experimented with the materials of lithography, a printing technique in which an image is drawn on a flat stone using a greasy crayon. Here Marisol oiled her naked body and pressed it onto two lithographic stones resulting in two prints. She embellished these with a lithographic crayon, evoking physical presence rather than documenting it literally. An extra set of feet appears on the lower sheet, likely created when Marisol lifted herself off the stone.