Melancholia

Smith’s work frequently depicts girls and young women drawn from such sources as fairy tales, literature, and history. Melancholia is part of the Blue Series, a group of fifteen etchings in blue hues whose subjects represent figures from the arts, religion, film, and mythology. The print can be read as a meditation on artistic production, with a focus on printmaking, as well as on the artist’s own biography. Smith, who often uses her own body and image in her work, has depicted herself here as a grounded winged figure representing melancholy, one of the humors credited with artistic creation. The image and title are references to Albrecht Dürer’s celebrated 1514 print of the same name. Smith reversed Dürer’s image and eliminated multiple details so as to draw attention to the female figure, who sits before a polyhedron, a possible reference to the geometrical sculptures created by her father, the artist Tony Smith.