THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY PERSONIFIED by Marcel Dzama with texts by Jason Rosenfeld and Jason Tougaw

David Zwirner, 2005, First edition, 96 pp., 8" X 10", Hardcover

Fine

Features Dzama's drawings, costumes, sculptures, and notebook pages. The title, The Course of Human History Personified, is borrowed from the poet Dante and recalls both grandiose artistic and literary cycles from the nineteenth century such as the New York Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole’s five-painting The Course of Empire of 1836, where nature plays as large a role as humans. In Dzama’s art, personification has always been the main leitmotif—imagined characters and trees and beasts assume base human characteristics. The catalogue also includes a unique fold out designed by the artist.

"I draw during the day, but the ideas come at night." - Marcel Dzama