June Wayne (1918-2011), printed by Edward Hamilton, Arriving, 1907 from “The Dorothy Series”, 1976 |
Color lithograph printed on Wayne’s own BFK Rives paper with mushroom watermark, sheet: 17 1/4 × 21 5/8 in. (43.8 × 54.9 cm) |
Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Gift of an anonymous donor) |

2018.15.2412 © 2020 The June Wayne Collection / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

 

Founder of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, artist June Wayne created “The Dorothy Series” in honor of her late mother, Dorothy Kline. The second lithograph in the series, Arriving, 1907 is based on a photograph of Dorothy (far left) and her three siblings around the time they immigrated to the United States from Russia through Ellis Island. Dorothy’s family was part of a wave of Eastern European immigrants fleeing pogroms as well as conscription into the Czar’s army. Rather than faithfully reproduce the original photograph, Wayne evokes its negative and alludes to the American flag in order to communicate her mother’s shock upon entering the country. In the 1960s and 1970s, several other artists—most famously Jasper Johns, David Hammons, and Faith Ringgold—used the American flag to wage pictorial and/or political critiques. Here, Wayne uses it to help dramatize the distinction between the reality and the fantasy of the American dream.