The All Seeing Ones,, (undated)

Lubell 6/14: 105

A hand colored white line woodcut print of what appear to be two faces in extremely close profile, to the point where the only clear thing that we can see of them are their eyes and noses. The former are a very deep and dark blue, with only one pupil in the three eyes shown (one of the faces is presented from the left, with presumably his right eye away from our gaze). The skin is beige and grey, like a marble statue, and there appears to be some kind of dark grey hair behind them, but the only notable and lasting element are the eyes. Some notes on the front, likely by Lubell herself, indicate "reduce" with a line segment on the vertical part of the drawing. An associated note identifies the source of the subject of the print: “THE ALL-SEEING ONES. Stone statues of goddesses, two feet high, have been excavated from a site at Tell Asmar, north of present-day Bagdad. They date from the Sumerian civilization of the 3rd Millennium B.C. On these brooding, powerful statues the corneas of the eyes were made of shell or bone and the pupils of lapis lazuli, set in place with bitumen.” Signed Winifred Lubell. See woodblock titled All Seeing (Lubell 407, Box 18) and drawings Lubell 382 and 383. Untitled woodblock Lubell 507 (Box 41) is a different treatment of the subject.

18.6 x 45.8 cm