"All the Work I do Is in My Neck" from Images from a Locked Ward
Michael Mazur
American, 1935–2009
1963–65, published 1965
A lithograph that confronts the viewer with a distorted, anguished head and tangled neck—Mazur's attempt to make visible the psychological pain and confinement of patients in a locked psychiatric ward.
A single, oversized head tilts across the page in dense smudges and frantic, wiry strokes set against a soft, scraped background, while the lower form dissolves into empty paper, making the figure feel both weighted and precariously insubstantial.
Part of the Images from a Locked Ward series, this print helped shift mid‑20th‑century printmaking toward raw, expressionistic depictions of mental illness and used lithography as a vehicle for social and psychological critique.
Medium
One from a portfolio of fourteen lithographs
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 17 3/4 × 13 13/16" (45.1 × 35.1 cm); sheet: 25 5/8 × 19 13/16" (65.1 × 50.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of the artist
Accession
806.1965.13
Palette
Exhibitions
