Toast

Story by Stephen F. Eisenman

Artwork by Sue Coe

This special issue of the Anthropocene Alliance Newsletter is dedicated to a single artwork by Sue Coe. Sue has been a good friend of Anthropocene Alliance from the beginning, offering advice and moral support when we first launched, and providing artworks to illustrate some of our blogs and stories. Her art is found in the permanent collections of many of the most famous museums in the world. She had a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2018 and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Nation, and dozens of other newspapers and magazines.

“We sometimes describe A2 as an artwork-in-progress.” 

Newcomers to A2 may not be aware of our commitment to art, artists, and expressive culture, as well as to environmental justice. We believe the challenges we are facing—that our community members face—require the contributions of creative and imaginative people from all walks of life. That’s the reason we sometimes describe A2 as an “artwork-in-progress.” 

Please take a look at Sue Coe’s Toast and follow our brief discussion below.

Sue Coe, Toast, linocut, 2022. Collection: The artist.

Explaining Sue’s art can be like explaining a joke—if you do it successfully, you ruin it. So, we won’t say much about Toast except that it draws upon art and images that were common about 100 years ago, just after World War I, when national leaders met at Versailles to sign a treaty dividing-up the world and assigning blame for the war. But this time, it isn’t the status of nation-states that’s on the agenda. It’s the planet itself, its people and resources. 

“What can we do to end this awful dinner party?”

Look at the table, the diners, and the decimated landscape outside. Then consider the riches on view: the champagne being served, the baked ham on a platter, the marvelous crystal chandelier, the fine clothing of the men and women, and the valuable framed painting on the wall in back—it’s based upon a print by the great, German expressionist, E.L. Kirschner, Nude Girl in the Bath (1909). Is this our world now? Or a future world? And what can we do to end this awful dinner party? Smash the doors of the mansion? Expel the diners? Take possession of the planet and cool it down? Can environmental leaders, grassroots organizations and everyday people join forces to change attitudes, policies, and politics? Or are we all just…toast?

How would you end the party? Comment here.

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