But I just saw two schoolgirls cock their heads, deciphering the flanking statements. One, to the right, offers the promise of fond slavery, a hope for free meals ahead; the left one threatens the artist’s very hands, promises the artist will soon suffer terribly and never paint again.

Finally, in the picture’s lower center, two human hands are outlined, then painted to appear dimensional. They exist side by side, small puppets downstage within too large a proscenium. A His, a Hers. Her hand wears a ring.

From its stone, a compass radiates. Elaborate directional arrows reach the picture’s farthest edges. The arrows are rendered in many fine lines as from some antique engraved map. At the center of this compass, in the picture’s bottom center, on the ring finger of the smaller hand, hers, a collage element.

The third finger seems dwarfed by so huge a gemstone, a big pale chunk, three-dimensional. I bend nearer to see it better:

It is a block of wood, maybe eight inches square. It has been enameled white—the outer edges outlined in sloppy double stripes of black. And, as on some child’s nursery building block, in the center of each, freely hand-painted, rests the number 282.

I try ignoring the teacher’s standardized lecture on this artist. Gender role questioning, “masculine” approach to paint application but a psychological … etc. I wait. A pretty droopy girl finally scuffs off, revealing the wall-mounted label. Not wanting to whip out my reading glasses (they date me so), instead I ease back two full feet. Back, more back, till these official modernist block letters playing before my eyes finally swim into a clarity that holds.

Artist: Alabama Byrnes
American. Female, b. 1952. d. 1990.
Oil and collage. 9 by 6 feet.
Former estate of the
artist, recent gift of
the Vincent Astor
Foundation.
Title:
Patient Number

After After

We found it impossible to express the change that appeared in the very countenances of the people……They would open their windows and call from one house to another, “What good news?” And when they answered that the plague was abated, and the bills (of deaths) decreased almost two thousand, they would cry out, “God be praised!” and would weep aloud for joy … And such was the joy of the people, that it was, as it were, life to them from the grave.

They shook one another by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the same side of the way before. I could also set down many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of their grief; but that would be to lessen the value of it …