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Thumbnail-size images of copyrighted artworks are displayed under fair use, in accordance with guidelines recommended by the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, published by the College Art Association in February 2015.
Biden Beats Trump (November 8, 2020)
Fred Tomaselli (American, born in 1956)
2021
Medium/Technique
Digital ink jet print with color screenprint
Dimensions
Image: 40.6 × 30.5 cm (16 × 12 in.)
Sheet: 50.8 × 40.6 cm (20 × 16 in.)
Sheet: 50.8 × 40.6 cm (20 × 16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase with funds donated by Davis and Carol Noble in memory of Lois B. Torf
Accession Number2021.143
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsPrints
Contemporary American painter and printmaker Fred Tomaselli has created an extended series of prints inspired by front page articles from The New York Times. Each is based on a digital reproduction of an actual front page, which Tomaselli then embellishes with colorful flourishes added by hand. The resulting prints are a combination of digital ink jet and traditional color screenprint. (The artist himself admits the irony of his use of traditional print media as source material in combination with digital technology, which is itself responsible for the gradual decline of the newspaper industry.) "Biden Beats Trump (November 8, 2020)" celebrates the historic electoral victory of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. To the Times’s photograph of the candidates exchanging a fist bump, the artist has added a vibrant array of brightly colored stripes that radiate from the point of contact. While their masks—and the substitution of a fist bump for the traditional hand shake—refer to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tomaselli emphasizes the optimism of the moment, noting: "I saw in this image a sense of exuberant joy, a sense of excitement for the new possibilities that this administration could possibly bring to America."
Inscriptions1/80
Provenance2021, sold by James Cohan Gallery, New York to the MFA. (Accession Date: February 24, 2021)