Ghetto Wall #2, 1970, Oil, acrylic, and collage on linen, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, museum purchase with support from Friends of the Collection, including anonymous (2), Charlton and Eleanor Ames, Eileen Gillespie and Timothy Fahey, Cyrus Hagge, Patricia Hille Dodd Haggee, Alison and Horace Hildreth, Douglas and Sharyn Howell, Harry W. Konkel, Judy and Leonard Lauder, Marian Hoyt Morgan and Christopher Hawley Corbett, Anne and Vince Oliviero, D. Suzi Osher, Christina F. Petra, Karen and Stuart Watson, and Michael and Nina Zikha, and with support from the Freddie and Regina Homburger Endowment for Acquisitions, and the Emily Eaton Moore and Family Fund for the Collection, 2019.16

Audio Description

Ghetto Wall #2 from 1970 is oil, acrylic and collage on linen. It is in the collection of the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine. It was purchased with support from Friends of the Collection, including two anonymous donors, Charlton and Eleanor Ames, Eileen Gillespie and Timothy Fahey, Cyrus Hagge, Patricia Hille Dodd Haggee, Alison and Horace Hildreth, Douglas and Sharyn Howell, Harry W. Konkel, Judy and Leonard Lauder, Marian Hoyt Morgan and Christopher Hawley Corbett, Anne and Vince Oliviero, D. Suzi Osher, Christina F. Petra, Karen and Stuart Watson, and Michael and Nina Zikha, and with support from the Freddie and Reginia Homburger Endowment for Acquisitions, and the Emily Eaton Moore and Family Fund for the Collection. The accession number is 2019.16.

This is a vertical abstract artwork with collage, oil, and acrylic paints on linen called Ghetto Wall #2. It is a depiction of a mural on a wall. At the bottom, there are six rows of dark red, rectangular bricks, making up part of the wall. At the top is a horizontal band of black with jagged patches of yellow, red, and blue. Within those marks, from left to right, there are some hand-painted words scrawled like graffiti in red: you; I; me; LOVE; and a heart. Beneath this, on a band that stretches across the painting, there is a dark silhouette of a person in front of a golden yellow backdrop. White and yellow contours are around the left side of the body, and a red outline is around the right. From the chest down, dark paint makes way for bright blue with multi-color brushstrokes and abstracted geometric shapes like an X and a circle. Elsewhere, there are thick brushstrokes of blue, orange, yellow, white, and green over a red and orange background. Stars and red and white stripes appear throughout, as if parts of an American flag were taken apart.

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