Sue Coe: The Ghosts of Our Meat

by Sue Coe (Artist), Stephen Eisenman (Contributor), Phillip Earenfight (Editor)

The Ghosts of Our Meat examines a series of paintings, prints and drawings by artist/activist Sue Coe that criticize the practice of meat consumption and the capitalist slaughterhouse industry, while advocating animal rights and a sustainable, non-meat diet. Coe's work centers on such issues as animal rights, empathy, cruelty, corporate greed and consumer guilt. Discussing her works in an accompanying essay, Stephen Eisenman demonstrates connections between Coe's work and that of Romantics and Expressionists, inviting comparisons with paintings by artists such as Hogarth, Goya, Grosz, Dix, Shahn, Picasso and Golub. However, while these artists focused largely on man's inhumanity towards fellow man, Sue Coe broadens the perspective to include atrocities committed by man against fellow animals. Indeed, many of Coe's works reference the style and imagery of Weimar-era art, drawing uncomfortable and controversial comparisons between the slaughterhouses of the meat industry and those of the Holocaust.

118 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2014

About the author

Sue Coe grew up next to a slaughterhouse in Liverpool. She studied at the Royal College of Art in London and left for New York in 1972. Early in her career, she was featured in almost every issue of Art Spiegelman’s groundbreaking magazine Raw, and has since contributed illustrations to the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Nation, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Details, The Village Voice, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Esquire and Mother Jones, among other publications. Her previous books include Dead Meat (winner of the 1991 Genesis Award) and Cruel. Among her many awards are the Dickinson College Arts Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art, and a National Academy of Arts Award (2009).

Reviews

[Diogenes Grief · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only recently stumbled upon Sue Coe, and I feel ashamed to not have heard about her sooner. This catalogue for a 2013 exhibit at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania is a powerful protest against meat-eating and industrial slaughter, which is the focus Coe has dedicated her life’s work to. In many ways I feel she is the Barbara Krueger of animal rights, but that is just one person’s impression. Coe does so with tenacity and a huge heart for the animal kingdom. We could all certainly seek to eat more veggies, and find our protein needs through plants, with obesity rates swelling as they are (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obes...), and with environmental havoc already underway (Paul Hawken & crew’s master battle-plan Drawdown [http://www.drawdown.org/ ] has a “plant-rich diet” at #4 on their triaged list of crucial priorities humanity needs too undertake in order to forestall the dire effects of global warming). Choosing the higher moral ground doesn’t hurt in that effort too. A tri-fold win.

If you’d like to be appalled into humility, devour Coe’s work with empathy and the willingness to consider better choices with all that you consume. This is art with profound meaning.