File:Nancy Bowen All American Personalities with Kali's Tongues.jpeg

Collage by Nancy Bowen, All-American Personalities with Kali’s Tongues (gouache and digital collage on found book, 51" x 37", 2018). The image illustrates a later body of work by Nancy Bowen: her complex collaged works beginning in the 2010s, which combined diverse sources, motifs and content and evoked unidentified myths, archetypes and rituals, often involving the female body. In this image redaction plays a crucial role as Bowen covered over stories from an old book on "great American personalities"—all male—with color blocks and an abstraction of a woman with strands emitting from her body that suggested a reclamation of power. These collages were publicly exhibited in prominent venues, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications.

Artist Nancy Bowen. Copyright held by the artist.

Nancy Bowen

Entire artwork

Yes. The image will not affect the commercial value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.

The image has contextual significance serving an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a major later body of work in Nancy Bowen's career from the 2010s onward, when she began producing complex collaged works on paper that connect her New England roots and Eastern spiritualism through the language of contemporary art. These works share qualities of hybridity and multiplicity of her sculpture, freely mixing materials (fragments of almanacs, rubbings, maps, engravings, pamphlets, stamps, etc.), motifs and content from various cultures, eras and belief systems that she mixes, adds and redacts in relation to more personal elements, for example, involving her New England heritage, Because the article is about an artist and her art, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this key body of work, which brought Bowen later recognition through exhibitions in major venues and coverage by major critics and publications. Bowen's work of this type and this series, as well as this specific work, are discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Nancy Bowen, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image use is minimal in that it conveys important information that a full artwork image at a limited fair-use size cannot due to the uniquely hyper-detailed nature of the work. By providing a close-up of the artist's style and imagery, it is significantly more informative for a viewer. It is also a further protection (along with the low resolution) against affecting commercial value.