File talk:MOURNING 1968.jpg

Not only does Mourning, the last of its series done in Pittsburgh in 1968, clearly show the technical concept borrowed from etching in which the ground of wax covering the plate gets drawn into revealing the plate's surface, but the image on the left is a direct transposition from the etching of the artist's mother and the image of the two heads on the right is made directly from the etching of Evelyn Ress, both done in December 1966.

Combined, they make the complementary parts to a whole iconic unit, where the face of the artist's mother looks out toward the viewer in weary resignation, while that of the other two faces are deep in exhaustion or worse. Once the artist is in Paris that autumn of 1968, the composition of the icon will be tightened in Upper & Lower Kingdoms in October; then in December transformed in the much larger icon Father, Vulture, Holy Butterfly with the addition of the winged Butterfly.