"Les Belles et la Bete II: Before the Hunt"

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(1978)

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"Les Belles et la Bete II: Before the Hunt"  1978, resist-ground etching and engraving; 588x990mm; 22" x 39", full margins. Signed, titled, dated and numbered in pencil, lower margin. A very good, dark impression [Milton 98].

Peter Milton (1930 -) was born in Philadelphia, the third of four children.  He attended the Yale School of Art studying under Josef Albers. He earned both his BFA and MFA at Yale, after which he taught at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. It was while at the Maryland Institute that Peter Milton turned his attention increasingly on print making and began his monochromatic journey to becoming one of the 20th century's greatest printmakers.

Peter Milton's facility with printmaking techniques incur an overpowering visual and emotional impression on the viewer.  It is the irreducible element arising from the subjective content of his images that demands the viewer interprets the meanings within his imagery.  There is an intelligence and poeticism in his art that is ambiguous in time and place, and leaves the viewer with the impression of undefined familiarity. Time is halted, environments symbolic and images at once known and unknown drawn from historical times past, present and future force the observer to look beyond the subjective and discover a magical narrative.  Peter Milton's art draws on American realism as well as Surrealism's evocative juxtapositions of objects, figures and elusive meanings.

Peter Milton's art is not easily understood. It requires focused attention and reflection on the viewer's part for the secrets within the narrative to be recognized. "Les Belles et La Bete I and II" at first viewing seem to evoke a distant past, but upon closer examination they seem to be set at the end of the 19th century to the eve of World War II. There are proper men's top hats and ladies with carefully arranged and attended dress. This is a period not long ago, but seemingly forever lost.  "Les Belles et La Bete I: The Rehearsal and Les Belles et La Bete II: Before the Hunt" are fantasies confronting the sexual component of adolescence, with strong central figures protecting more vulnerable figures.

It is important to consider Peter Milton's objective of creating mystery through ambiance and ambiguity.  He achieves this illusion through what he refers to as layering of the two dimensions of the surface of his prints, a third dimension of spatial illusion and a fourth dimension "where different times exist simultaneously and a single element can appear at various different moments of its existence".  Peter Milton is rearranging the temporal dimension.

"Les Belles et la Bete II: Before the Hunt" is in a large Larson-Juhl "Sevilla" 35 3/8" x 51 3/4" antique silver lip frame.  The outer oyster hand-covered Belgique linen and dove gray Beveled Accent mats are acid and lignin free and protected with Acrylite-AR OP3 (UV) by CYRO ... $2,900.00