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Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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Tim Rollins

Kids of Survival (K.O.S.)

Study for Amerika-A Refuge

1991

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In 1981 the artist Tim Rollins developed a curriculum for Intermediate School 52 in the South Bronx that incorporated art-making with reading and writing for students classified as academically and emotionally at risk. Rollins and his group of young artists known as K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) followed a collaborative process of “educating by art making.” Rather than reading books as received knowledge, Rollins and K.O.S. painted directly on texts, creating works that actualized their learning experience. These works are studies made by individual K.O.S. members for a series of larger paintings based on Franz Kafka’s incomplete first novel Amerika. Written between 1912 and 1914 and published posthumously in 1927, Amerika follows teenager Karl Rossmann as he is banished from his home in Prague and sent to New York City, where he suffers one ordeal after another. In the unfinished final chapter, Rossman finds a job with a mysterious and surreal Midwestern traveling theater, where he encounters hundreds of women dressed as angels playing golden horns. Prompted by this passage, Rollins and the K.O.S. members imagined a variety of golden horns informed by such diverse sources as human anatomy manuals, comic books, popular films, and paintings. FA18 (Common Read)

  • Artist Tim Rollins (American, 1955–2017)
    Kids of Survival (K.O.S.) (American artists’ collective, formed 1982)
  • Title Study for Amerika-A Refuge
  • Date 1991
  • Medium Watercolor and pencil on book page
  • Dimensions unframed | 8 x 5 1/4 in.
  • Credit line University purchase with funds from Nathan Cummings, by exchange, 1992
  • Object number WU 1992.14

Teaching Gallery exhibition
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/23/2004 - 03/28/2004

The Dual Muse: The Writer as Artist; the Artist as Writer
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 11/07/1997 - 12/21/1997

Twentieth Century Art from the Washington University Collection
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/28/1994 - 03/27/1994

1992
Schmidt Contemporary Art

Inscription Verso, lower center, in graphite: For Amerika-A Refuge / TR + K.O.S. / South Bronx 1991

Inscription Verso , along top edge, in graphite: 34

This artwork record may be incomplete or need refinement. Our staff actively researches the collection and revises records when new information is available. If you have questions or comments about this record, please contact us.

Related Content

go to Teaching Gallery exhibition page
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Exhibitions

Teaching Gallery exhibition

January 23, 2004–March 28, 2004
go to The Dual Muse: The Writer as Artist; the Artist as Writer page
no image
Exhibitions

The Dual Muse: The Writer as Artist; the Artist as Writer

November 07, 1997–December 21, 1997
go to Twentieth Century Art from the Washington University Collection page
no image
Exhibitions

Twentieth Century Art from the Washington University Collection

January 28, 1994–March 27, 1994

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