Perlman Teaching Museum - Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

Bookmark: https://artcollection.carleton.edu/objects-1/info/550

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

1941 - 1942
20th century
43 x 55 in. (109.2 x 139.7 cm)

Paul Burlin (aka Harry Paul Burlin), American, (1886–1969)

Object Type: Paintings

Creation Place: North America, United States

Medium and Support: Oil on canvas

Credit Line: Carleton College Art Collection, Encyclopedia Britannica Collection, gift of William Benton, Class of 1921, Trustee 1948-1961

Accession Number: 1997.256

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright is certainly a unique painting, both in general and in Burlin’s oeuvre. It clearly has the expressionistic elements of bright color, distortion and emotion in the orange of the gigantic tiger, his devilish expression created by his huge, pointy teeth the stars which represent his intoxicated joy of chomping on these small people. What does this grotesque image mean? It certainly is not the social realism of his works preceding this such as Soda Jerker (1939). Here one sees the beginning of his use of distortion in the figures and the heavy outline of forms, but Soda Jerker is still an everyday scene, not a nightmarish fantasy. Burlin explained Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright as an allegory of the artist. It depicts the artist’s struggle "against bourgeois taste." Burlin clearly would not concede to the mainstream’s preference for "nice art," but rather he saw himself as the tiger who is tough, but also smart.
Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright was given to Carleton College in 1954 by William Benton, an alum and former trustee of the College. This and nine other works in the Carleton Collection were originally part of the Encyclopedia Britannica Collection of Contemporary American Painting. This painting toured the country in 1962 as part of the Paul Burlin Retrospective that was organized by the American Federation of the Arts. This exhibition was the last in a series of awards given to American artists in 1960.

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This object has the following keywords:

20th Century, 21st Century, American*, canvas*, Contemporary*, oil (substance)*, oil painting (technique)*, oil paintings (visual works)*, paintings (visual works)*

20th Century
21st Century
American - Refers to the context of or associated specifically with the modern political entity of the United States of America.
canvas - Closely woven textile made in various weights, usually of flax, hemp, jute, or cotton, used especially for sails, tarpaulins, awnings, upholstery, and as a support for oil painting. Also used for a latticelike mesh made of similar material, used as a needlepoint foundation.
Contemporary - Refers to painting, sculpture, graphic arts, and architecture dating from the recent past and present. It differs from modern art in that the term 'contemporary art' does not carry the implication of a non-traditional style, but instead refers only to the time period in which the work was created. 'Modern' and 'contemporary' are inherently fluid terms. The term 'contemporary' is sometimes more narrowly used to refer to art from ca. 1960 or 1970 up to the present.
oil (substance) - General term for a wide variety of viscous liquids (or easily liquefiable on warming) that are both combustible and immiscible in water. The character of oils may be mineral (e.g., paraffin), vegetable (e.g., linseed), animal (e.g., fish), essential (e.g., turpentine), or edible (e.g., olive).
oil painting (technique) - The art or practice of producing creative works in oil paint, which is pigment suspended in vegetal drying oils. It dates from at least the Middle Ages in Europe, and was widely adopted for easel painting by the fifteenth century.
oil paintings (visual works) - Creative works in the medium of oil paint.
paintings (visual works) - Unique works in which images are formed primarily by the direct application of pigments suspended in oil, water, egg yolk, molten wax, or other liquid, arranged in masses of color, onto a generally two-dimensional surface.