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Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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William S. Burroughs

Envy, from the portfolio The Seven Deadly Sins

1991

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  • Artist William S. Burroughs (American, 1914–1997)
  • Title Envy, from the portfolio The Seven Deadly Sins
  • Date 1991
  • Medium Screenprint
  • Edition description 29/90
  • Dimensions unframed |
    framed | 46 7/8 x 32 7/8 x 2 in.
  • Credit line University purchase, Art Acquisition Fund, 1995
  • Object number WU 1995.16.06 b

4/13/1995
Shearburn Fine Art, William

Inscription Textual component: The model for Sin can be seen in Virus, which / produces replicas of its own image from the host it / invades. The Anger of a wildcat is pure and beautiful; / the Anger of a lynch mob or a guard dog is ugly and / diseased — ugly because it is distorted, diseased because it / is imposed. The Anger is not a reaction of the organism / itself, but an image forced upon the organism. // The same can be said for all the Sins: an inordinate, / loveless, soulless Lust, like the paintings on Chimu urns, / where a man is being absorbed into his own penis . . . / Avarice, divorced from real need . . . Gluttony, divorced / from real hunger — the hideous vocacity of the Vile Self / Eaters reduces the subject to a quivering protoplasm . . . / Envy, inordinate by its nature, a need that can never / be satisfied . . . Sloth — by a deep slough of clear yellow / piss, seepage from the Duad flowing there in the / distance, bathed in golden light from a sun that never / sets, and the black fish swimming around and around in / the stagnant green-black depths of the black water, / recycled again and agian, like Virus that feeds on itself / for all eternity.

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