Mark Dion "Some Recent Plagues" Lithograph

“Some Recent Plagues” is a two-color hand-printed lithograph by Mark Dion, created in collaboration with Obee Editions. Printed in Dion’s signature palette of blue and red, the work recalls the directness of natural history illustration while turning its focus toward the political and cultural forces that haunt the present day.

The print depicts a field of fantastical monsters drawn from a wide range of art historical sources: from Northern European Renaissance engravings to Japanese iconography and other mythic traditions. Each creature is carefully labeled with terms drawn from contemporary life: “Factory Farming,” “The Military Industrial Complex,” “Climate Change Deniers,” and others. Together they form a bestiary of modern power, corruption, and ideology.

Through this mixture of historical imagery and modern critique, Dion transforms the page into a kind of illuminated manuscript for the 21st century. The monsters, rendered with precision and humor, embody the enduring vices and excesses of civilization, suggesting that our most dangerous “plagues” are not biological but cultural, economic, and moral.

Technically, the lithograph demonstrates the depth and texture possible only through traditional hand-printing. The interplay of red and blue inks gives the image a vibratory tension, echoing the polarized dynamics of political discourse.

“Some Recent Plagues” stands as both a satirical and sobering reflection on power, uniting Dion’s long-standing interests in taxonomy, ideology, and the entanglement of art and politics within a composition that is as visually captivating as it is intellectually charged.