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    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990

    Hugh Steers

    Official Letter, 1990
    Oil on canvas
    50 x 44 1/8 in
    127 x 112.01 cm
    EHS039

    Further images

    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 1 ) Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 2 ) Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 3 ) Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 4 ) Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 5 ) Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
    • (View a larger image of thumbnail 6 ) Hugh Steers, Official Letter, 1990
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    In Official Letter (1990), Hugh Steers paints a woman wearing a bag over her head. Through its reference to hooding, the composition draws parallels between an execution and a positive...
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    In Official Letter (1990), Hugh Steers paints a woman wearing a bag over her head. Through its reference to hooding, the composition draws parallels between an execution and a positive HIV diagnosis while metaphorically referencing the US government’s willful blindness: its refusal to acknowledge the devastation of the AIDS crisis. In the early 1990s, Steers painted a series of images which feature figures wearing paper bags over their heads. Fellow artist and friend Julie Heffernan observes that Steers’ bag figures were indicative of a larger stylistic shift that was occurring in the artist’s practice as he began to create images that directly addressed aspects of AIDS. “A bag over the head means you’re shifting to a different kind of head, a different kind of persona that you want to paint,” Heffernan explains. “You put a bag over your head because you literally don’t know what you look like in this new incarnation that is fomenting.”

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    Provenance

    Estate of Hugh Steers

    Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY

    Private Collection, The Netherlands

    Exhibitions

    2021: Hugh Steers: Strange State of Being, Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY
    1991: Hugh Steers, Midtown Payson Galleries, New York, NY

    Literature

    Kass, Ray. “Hugh Steers at Midtown Payson Galleries,” Artforum, September 1991.

    Trout, Hank. “A Strange State of Being.” A&U Magazine, March 15, 2021

    Publications

    Schröder, Barbara and Karen Kelly, eds. Hugh Steers: the Complete Paintings, 1983-1994. New York: Visual AIDS, 2015, p. 216.
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