#(52) PANDORA'S BOX

Edition of 1394 of which 100 copies are signed 1-100, 26 are signed A-Z as artist's proofs, and four sets are signed as progressives.

October 6, 1975 Seven colors 13" x 24"

Influence: Georges de Feure

Client: Tom Luddy, The Pacific Film Archive, University Art Museum, 2625 Durant Avenue, Berkeley CA 94720. Telephone (510) 642-1413 A-Z: Artist's own use

(Communication Arts, January/February 1977; Print Casebooks 2, 1977) (facsimile)

For some reason that I cannot fathom, ancient literature and legend imply that everything was hunky-dory until dames came along. Saturday night must have been pretty slow back then. Pandora, for example, as the first woman, is an affliction intentionally created to offset the blessing of fire. She's beautiful and talented, but reading between the lines, she apparently can run rings around her dodo husband, Epimetheus. His name, after all, means "Mr. Hindsight," whereas hers means "the all-gifted."

Through no fault of her own, Pandora comes equipped with a box full of nasty surprises, which of course gets opened and every kind of misery flies out. But, she gets blamed for it anyway.

Adam-another First Guy, and like the rest of them as dumb as a box of hammers-is originally created with a mate, same as all the other animals. But, Lilith is not only smart and good-looking, she's got an independent streak in her a mile wide, and tells Adam to take a hike when he insists that she do what he says. Out into the wilderness goes Lilith, and in a world-class bad mood, too.

Adam gets a new wife, made out of his superfluous 13th rib, and in no time at all, this one manages to feed him a forbidden pomegranate, and thereby introduces evil into the world. Adam shifts the blame onto Eve, who in turns fingers the wily trickster, who told her exactly what would happen if she did eat it. She'd get smart, is what. Maybe men realized early on that if it weren't that they're bigger and stronger, they wouldn't stand a chance.