{"object":[{"sourceId":{"label":"Source ID","value":"69813"},"creditline":{"label":"Credit Line","value":"Gage Mace Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza"},"labelText":{"label":"Description","value":"Oil painting on canvas by artist Gage Mace, \"The Assassination of President Kennedy,\" dated 1992 - 1996.\r\n\r\n\"The Assassination of President Kennedy\" is a large triptych oil on canvas painting by artist Gage Mace. It was painted from 1992 to 1996 and is based on the Abraham Zapruder home movie of the Kennedy assassination. The painting consists of three large panels, each depicting a portion of a continuous image, meant to mimic the nature of separate frames in a strip of film. The artist's intention in painting this piece was to highlight and bring forward the details of the moment right before the assassination of President Kennedy. \r\n\r\nAccording to the artist, \"It is the last moment of JFK's life, the instant before the head shot. Everything is slowed down, time stretches out. It is a breathless moment in which the Secret Service agent is running to catch up to the car, reaching for the hand grip on the trunk of the limo. Trying to get to the president in time to save his life. We know he doesn't make it, we know the shot will ring out, and we all know what happens in frame 313 of this film. This is the moment before the world changes forever. And so, because we all know that moment already, I chose to hold up a magnifying glass to the moment before, making it big, making it sharper, without the blurry distortion. The moment is held in crystal clear relief, frozen in amber.\""},"invno":{"label":"Object number","value":"2020.022.0001"},"description":{"label":"Description","value":"\"The Assassination of President Kennedy\" is a large triptych oil on canvas painting by Portland artist Gage Mace. It was painted from 1992 to 1996 and is based on the Kennedy assassination. The painting consists of three large panels, each depicting a portion of a continuous image, meant to mimic the nature of separate frames in a strip of film. The artist's intention in painting this piece was to highlight and bring forward the details of the moment right before the assassination of President Kennedy in a hyper real way without straying into the world of photorealism. The composition follows two strong directions arrowing in from either side of the painting, one represented by the running Secret Service agent in the left panel, and one represented by the leaping figure in the right panel. Everything in the painting, from the horizontal stripes of the American flag to the way the figures in the car are positioned, bring the viewer's attention to the central figure, President Kennedy.\r\n\r\nThe artist was inspired by stills from the Zapruder film particularly after seing them reproduced in publications such as LIFE Magazine. According to the artist, \"Because I and probably most people identify the assassination with the Zapruder film, those images carry a great deal of emotional content. I wanted that emotion to carry through into a painting-only clearer and nearer than what the film shows. I wanted to place the viewer of the painting in the scene as an eyewitness, and so we are on the curb roughly where assassination witnesses Bill and Gail Newman stood, seeing what they saw as the motorcade went by. My goal, then, was to select a composite of Zapruder images, put them into one image, draw it closer to the foreground, heighten the clarity, and paint it using the classical oil painting techniques as a model for the style.\"\r\n\r\nThe viewer sees the painting with a level of detail not available in the actual images from the Zapruder film. The artist used not only frames 236 through 274 as souce material, he also used images from books about the assassination, real-life models, and even an encounter with the same make and model of the Presedential limousine. The artist used his imagination to determine what many of the details of the painting should look like, such as the reflection of the pergola on the grassy knoll in the side of the car and the reflected image of the Secret Service agent on the trunk. In fact, in his efforts to avoid photorealism and emphasize the emotion of the moment, Mace intentionally altered details from the Zapruder film to fit his color pallette and artistic vision. For instance, Secret Service agent Clint Hill wore a black suit the day of the assassination, however the Secret Service agent seen running towards the back of the limousine in the painting is wearing a blue suit, which ties him visually to the car but does not reflect the reality of the day. The background figures are painted in subdued colors to make them recede into the distance while highlighting the sun-drenched brightly-colored figures in the car. Additionally, the artist took some artistic liberties when representing the positions and facial expressions of the main figures. Govenor Connally is reacting to his wounds with an exagerated and pained look on his face as his twists around towards President Kennedy while the artist chose to depict Jackie looking somewhat down, before the unfolding horror has really registered with her. He felt that trying to capture a look of horror on her face gave her an exaggerated, almost cartoonish look that he did not like. Finally, President Kennedy's face is partially obscurred by his upraised arm so that there is still an element of mystery to his last moments. According to the artist, \"There were other challenges in heightening the level of detail without straying into photorealism. That was never my intent, but rather a hyper real experience expressing the action in painterly terms so that the viewer is always aware that what they are looking at is a painting. Holding that tension between the idea of a painting and a heightened realism was one of the most challenging aspects of this project. In the Zapruder film, for example, if you stop at the frames just prior to 313, Kennedy's upraised arm is so foreshortened it hardly conveys the idea of an arm at all. I had two friends pose in that position and had them try different arm positions to get a stronger sense of an arm in that pose without the extreme foreshortening, but while also trying to remain faithful to that gestural element. Since the angle and proportions of the figures in Zapruder changes as the car continues down Elm Street, it was difficult to land on a representation between the actual angle of view represented in the painting and a slightly earlier part of the sequence which shows the arm as having a more recognizable form.\"\r\n\r\nAccording to the artist, \"The painting lands on a combination of Zapruder images from roughly frame 236 to 274. It is the last moment of JFK's life, the instant before the head shot. Everything is slowed down, time stretches out. It is a breathless moment in which the Secret Service agent is running to catch up to the car, reaching for the hand grip on the trunk of the limo. Trying to get to the president in time to save his life. We know he doesn't make it, we know the shot will ring out, and we all know what happens in frame 313 of this film. This is the moment before the world changes forever. And so, because we all know that moment already, I chose to hold up a magnifying glass to the moment before, making it big, making it sharper, without the blurry distortion. The moment is held in crystal clear relief, frozen in amber.\"\r\n\r\nSupplementary photographic prints and transparencies of triptych painting in-progress (2020.022.0002 - .0026) provide additional context to artwork."},"medium":{"label":"Medium","value":"Oil on canvas"},"onview":{"label":"On View","value":"0"},"media":{"label":"Media","value":[{"mediaURL":"https://emuseum.jfk.org/internal/media/dispatcher/61568/full","displayOrder":"0","mediaType":"Image","mediaId":"61568"},{"mediaURL":"https://emuseum.jfk.org/internal/media/dispatcher/64948/full","displayOrder":"0","mediaType":"Document","mediaId":"64948"}]},"title":{"label":"Title","value":"\"The Assassination of President Kennedy\" triptych oil painting by Gage Mace"},"classification":{"label":"Classifications","value":"Art"},"primaryMedia":{"label":"PrimaryMedia","value":"/internal/media/dispatcher/61568/full"},"depth":{"label":"Depth","value":["0E-10"]},"thesconcepts":{"label":"Terms","value":["Limousine","Motorcade","Artwork","Artist","Dealey Plaza","Zapruder film","Kennedy, John F.","Kennedy, Jacqueline","Connally, John","Connally, Nellie","Hill, Clint","Portland"]},"culture":{"label":"Object","value":"Artwork"},"displayDate":{"label":"Date","value":"1992 - 1996"},"textEntriesTextentries":{"label":"Curatorial Commentary","value":["Gage Mace decided on the dimensions for the piece based off of the idea of a film strip. The piece is long and narrow with three separate sections based on the idea of separate frames in a strip of film. The distinct panels separate the drama of each scene. According to the artist; \"Three separate panels affords the use of fabrications external to the painting to suggest sprocket holes, further divisions between the panels, a lengthening of the overall span which could slow down that last moment even more, creating even greater suspense. In other words, emphasizing the idea of a film strip so that in a sense we are looking at a painting about a film. The simplest way of exhibiting it is with the panels abutting to present a continuous flow, and that's the way I initially exhibited it in my studio and the way I had it photographed. But the versatility of the triptych format offers a number of ways to exhibit the painting, whereas doing it on one large canvas would have been more limiting.\" This artwork represents one of the largest pieces Gage Mace has ever tackled.  - Stephanie Allen-Givens, Collections and Exhibits Manager","The artist used the painting technique of glazing to create the illusion of a highly reflective surface on the Presidential limousine. According to Gage Mace, \"I used a glazing technique for the car in order to achieve a sense of depth and a surface that had a highly reflective quality. Glazing is an Old Master's technique often used for reflective surfaces or folds in richly colored material. Using this technique, the reflection is brought to life and the viewer sees what would be behind them reflected on the car, as well as what is happening in the car and across the street. Abraham Zapruder is given a subtle homage in this reflection - he can be spotted as a minute brushstroke standing on the concrete pedestal just above the reflection of the motorcycle fender.\" Additionally, a serendipitous encounter with a black Lincoln Continental the same make and model as the presidential limousine allowed the artist to take some source photos using himself and some friends as models for the eyewitnesses. As a result, he painted himself into the image in a subtle cameo that appears in the reflection on the side of the limousine. - Stephanie Allen-Givens, Collections and Exhibits Manager","Artist Gage Mace was eleven years old at the time of the Kennedy assassination. Since the 1960 campaign, Gage had been fascinated by John F. Kennedy. In his 2020 oral history with the Museum, he recalled, \"I think part of JFK's appeal to me was this dynamic sense of 'we're going to get moving again' and his appeal to young people and just seeing on the news, for instance, people's response to him, how people were affected by his speeches. And his press conferences became famous almost immediately. And so, I think that got into me and into my psyche.\" \r\nGage demonstrated his childhood interest in President Kennedy by waiting on his own, at age ten, for several hours to briefly see the president in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton Hotel on August 19, 1962. That moment resonated with Gage in a profound way. He recalled, \"It's still emotional, thinking back to that afternoon. But I was by the entrance, the Wilshire entrance, and I was the only one standing right there. And a man in a suit walked up to me, and he said, \"Son, would you please step aside?\" And so, I took about two or three steps back, and there he was. Wow! It's JFK! And he went by pretty quickly, but I was the first one in the lobby to see him enter the hotel. So, I started to applaud, and that started up the applause in the rest of the lobby. And so, I got a split second of eye contact for that, for being the kid who started up the applause.... So, it was a very short visual on me, but I did have some eye contact. And I think because of that moment, it had an effect on the way that the assassination hit me.\" -- Stephen Fagin, Curator"]},"id":{"label":"Id","value":"65952"},"dimensions":{"label":"Dimensions","value":"Overall triptych: 4.5 feet × 14 feet (137.2 × 426.8 cm)"}}]}