H. (All Thumbs)
1997
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
photogravure
Dimensions
image: 25 × 20 cm (9 13/16 × 7 7/8 in.) sheet: 31.6 × 24.2 cm (12 7/16 × 9 1/2 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Accession Number
2013.26.8
Art Historical Context
Al Taylor's *H. (All Thumbs)* (1997) is a witty and intimate photogravure, capturing the artist's playful fascination with everyday forms and perceptual quirks. Taylor, an American artist active in New York during the late 20th century, often transformed ordinary objects into abstract puzzles through drawing, sculpture, and prints. This modest image—measuring 25 × 20 cm—likely nods to the idiom "all thumbs," evoking clumsiness or manual dexterity, inviting viewers to the thumb's humble yet essential role in human experience. Photogravure, the work's medium, is a masterful intaglio process ble...
About the Artist
Al Taylor
Al Taylor (1948–1999) was born in Springfield, Missouri, and received his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1970, where he trained as a painter. That year, he relocated to New York City, embracing the vibrant art scene and taking a job as an assistant to Robert Rauschenberg, whose medium-blending experiments shaped Taylor's lifelong curiosity about the interplay between two and three di...