Porgy & Bess has been controversial since its premiere in 1935; Kara Walker is known for her controversial art on themes of race, violence, and American history.

In her Artist’s Statement, she says of the characters: “they’ve become archetypes of another no less grand drama, that of: ‘American Negroes drawn up by white authors, and retooled by individual actors, amid charges of racism, and counter charges of high-art on stage and screen, in the face of social and political upheaval, over generations.”

This fraught status, along with memories of her mother’s reaction to a cast recording, led her to render them in a straightforward way, “…more an homage to the feeling of the music. And to that feeling I had as a child of a heavy atmosphere hanging around a timeless act of love.”

Production Details

• Edition of 400 numbered copies for sale

• Quarto, 12-5/8 by 9-3/4 inches, 136 pages

• Prints editioned by Derrière L’Etoile Studio NYC, under the supervision of Maurice Sanchez

• Bound with red leather spine and printed cotton sides, in slipcase

• Arion Press publication #98, 2013

A limited number of unbound books in sheets are available for bookbinders at a 15% discount.

Optional Portfolio of Prints

Additional suite of four lithographs, different from the images in the book, signed and numbered by the artist.

• Edition of 40 suites for sale

• Printed on Somerset paper, 18 by 15 inches

• Editioned at Derrière L’Etoile Studio NYC, under the supervision of Maurice Sanchez

• Housed in a portfolio, with title page

• $10,000; sold only with a copy of the book