The Great Speckled Bird

2013

The Great Speckled Bird, 2013. Allen Rawson Ruppersberg (American, 1944-), published by Gemini G. E. L. at Joni Moisant Weyl. Color screenprint on four sheets of perforated player-piano roll; overall: 28.6 x 610.9 cm (11 1/4 x 240 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Stephen Dull 2018.53 © Allen Ruppersberg, Courtesy of the artist and Greene Naftali, New York This work by Allen Ruppersberg is an evocative visualization of American folk music. It takes its title from the Southern hymn “The Great Speckled Bird,” and it is printed on a player piano roll for that song. Across the image, Ruppersberg hand-wrote the lyrics to different hymns on American motel stationary that he collected over a period of several decades.