This elegant volume includes all of Milton's etchings from 1960 to the present. A number of the duotone reproductions are accompanied by details enlarged to actual size. Robert Flynn Johnson, curator-in-charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, complements his introduction with an intriguing interview of Milton on the artist's life and work, while an essay by Milton himself deconstructs the iconography of his prints Daylilies and Nijinsky Variations. Complete with a detailed documentation of the print editions, a chronology, and a bibliography, Peter Complete Prints 1960-1996 is a comprehensive and lavish portfolio.
I know he's very controlled, and that the work borders on a sort of anal-retentive surrealism, but somehow the temporal arrangements made spatial really work for me. These later works I am referencing really are closeto the way I want to perceive civic spaces, shared spaces. I think we need to feel and even see the ectoplasm, or we are just hyenas lying around on futons. I like the work. I like the political content too. The polis. Ghosts. Works for me.
POSTSCRIPT: I have spent more time with this book now, and have really enjoyed it. I just posted a fuller review of it on my blog, Joe Brainard's Pyjamas. For interested parties, here's a link...
While one can browse Milton's prints online, this book is full of very very good reproductions of the vast majority of his work. He has a deft hand, and a rather playful sense of how to put together the prints he makes- often, rather an Edwardian / Victorian sense of composition that creates a startling juxtaposition against the somewhat surrealist aesthetic he employs. This book is the next best thing to dropping four grand on buying one of his lithos, I suppose.