The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of May 30, 2026

A square print depicts two vertically aligned smartphones on a white field, adrift with scattered silver stars. The upper phone features a dark, painterly scroll flanked by a sweeping arc of colorful filter thumbnails. The lower phone is obscured by dense black Gothic script and two large, ornate gold letters. The text reflects on artist Philip Guston's identity and name change. A faint signature marks the bottom right corner.

Hit Parade

2024

Ken Aptekar

(American, 1950-)
publisher

Atelier du Livre d'Art et de l'Estampe

America
Letterpress, gold and silver leaf over archival inkjet print on Hahnemüle photo rag paper
Sheet: 55.9 x 55.9 cm (22 x 22 in.)
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 2024.159
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The artist purposely combined references to old and new art forms, combining a reference to a medieval manuscript, gold leaf, and letterpress with that of digital printing and a smartphone.

Description

The artist Ken Aptekar is known for meticulously re-creating canonical works of art and then overlaying them with text to activate what he sees as a partnership between the viewer and the artist in the creative process. In Hit Parade, a work commissioned by the Print Club of Cleveland, Aptekar repurposed the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 1978 painting by Philip Guston, Scroll (1992.212), a work that alludes to Guston’s Jewish identity. Aptekar miniaturized and altered Guston’s composition to approximate a medieval illuminated manuscript. He then layered it with texts suggestive of a social media platform on a smartphone. The result is a suggestive work that centers around the ability of social media to both express and hide one’s identity.
  • {{cite web|title=Hit Parade|url=false|author=Ken Aptekar, Atelier du Livre d'Art et de l'Estampe|year=2024|access-date=30 May 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2024.159