The Winner

Edgar Dorsey Taylor

By the late 1960s Edgar Dorsey Taylor had abandoned the lithography and painting that had launched his career to focus entirely on woodcuts. As well, his imagery had altered from straightforward representation, executed in the stylized dynamism of 1920s and ‘30s realism, to a cacophony of simplified, abstracted forms and repeat-pattern texture. No longer interested in the obvious, his later works no longer told a linear story, but seemed to portray a train of thought, instead, ideas that read like mysterious narratives.

In “The Winner” a highly abstracted figure appears to climb out of a manhole via wooden ladder, finding himself in the center of a road lined with palm trees and leggy, exaggerated telephone poles. A single traffic cone sits beside the hole, and a solid black backdrop, like a theater curtain, provides a frame for the figure, emphasizing his sudden and strange arrival. In this way, Taylor ensures that something like humor emerges from the composition.