Joe Zucker

Known for his use of unusual materials--his early paintings were made of cotton balls--Zucker frequently takes the materials of art production, such as canvas and paint brushes, as subjects. This drawing belongs to a series of works, including paintings on thick cotton fiber, addressing the fraught history of cotton production in the United States. Its inscription references Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, a machine for separating cotton from its seeds, which revolutionized the production of cotton in the early nineteenth century but also increased demand for slave labor.