File:Erika Rothenberg America A Shining Beacon to the World 2018.jpg

Multi-media work by Erika Rothenberg, America, A Shining Beacon to the World (Aluminum and felt case, plastic letters, 2018). The image illustrates Erika Rothenberg's satirical, socially critical text-based work, which often employs concise, deadpan prose in unconventional mass-media contexts (fake ads, billboards, window displays, and in this case, church signboards) to examine American ideology, mass culture, and taboo subjects. Her mock church signboards (begun in the early 1990s) suggested droll indices of despair in the form of weeklong church activity listings that indicted both organized religion and the growing role of disorders in American self-definition and social involvement. This body of work was publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications and acquired by major museums.

Artist Erika Rothenberg. Copyright held by the artist.

Erika Rothenberg

Entire artwork

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a representative example of Erika Rothenberg's text-based work from throughout her career from the 1980s to the 2020s, which employs strategies and formats from mass media and persuasion, using words in familiar ways to present satirical, socially critical content, often with a subversive feminist point of view. She often employs concise, deadpan prose and emblematic imagery in unconventional contexts: fake ads, signboards, billboards, window displays, newspaper inserts—to examine American ideology, mass culture, and taboo subjects. In the early 1990s, this work began to include mock church signboards that indicted both organized religion and the growing role of disorders in American self-definition and social involvement. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this major type of work, which brought Rothenberg ongoing recognition through exhibitions and coverage by major critics and publications. Rothenberg's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Erika Rothenberg, and the work no longer is viewable, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.