Work · Exceptionalism
The Rise and Fall of Western Civilization
2012, color pencil on paper, 17 x 12 inches
It's drawn as a CliffsNotes booklet: The Rise and Fall of Western Civilization, reduced to the yellow-and-black study guide you buy the night before the exam. Two thousand years, summarized, so you can pass without reading it.
The pun does the work twice. Cliff notes are the shortcut — the plot without the book — and a cliff is the edge you go over. Something epic and genuinely dangerous, condensed into a format designed to save you the trouble of encountering it.
Small on purpose — roughly the object it imitates — and drawn slowly in colored pencil, which is the opposite of a shortcut. That's the hinge of the series: the myth still performs, the study guide still sells, and nobody has done the reading.
Series: Exceptionalism