Untitled
- Artist: Etel Adnan
- Date: 1970
- Medium: Ink and watercolour on paper
- Dimensions: displayed: 213 x 2325 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Untitled” by Etel Adnan, created in 1970. It’s a long, accordion‑folded leporello – a book that slides open like a concertina. Adnan, a poet‑artist, ran Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 1968 poem “Assassination Raga” – an ecstatic eulogy for Senator Robert Kennedy – across the paper. The words stretch across the pages, splashed with water‑colour stains and what look like abstract hieroglyphs. A few Arabic characters are slipped in, hinting at the Palestinian‑linked suspicion of the assassination. The format turns the work into a moving piece of text and image: as you open it, you feel a river of language flowing. Adnan once said the leporello frees her from a flat square, making the page “a river.” It captures her mobile, nomadic spirit – a Lebanese‑Syrian artist living in California. This early piece shows how she blends poetry, calligraphy and visual art into a living book.
See it in person
Untitled is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
