In the last few years before his death in 2004, American artist Leon Golub focused his energy primarily on drawings and smaller canvasses that required less physical exertion. Whereas his large paintings demanded considerable time, labor and commitment, the more intimate scale of 8 x 10 inch drawings and 16 x 20 inch canvasses allowed him to experiment rapidly with new materials, improvise creatively and worry less about mistakes. In the politically charged environment of post 9/11 America, Golub returned to the scale of the late 1970’s political portraits with more raw, incisive subject matter. His intention was to create a series of propagandist wall posters, manifestoes of a sort, that might appear in an urban landscape. In a nod to Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War etchings, Golub worked on unprimed linen with black ink and acrylic paint. Many of the paintings, including Bite Your Tongue #1 (2002), feature a “frame within a frame”, made by painting a ground of white primer close to the edges of the canvas. Golub then inserted painted and/or stenciled text into the images and often included drawn elements that gave the illusion of collage. In a 2004 documentary filmed shortly before his death, Golub stated, “My work these days is sort of political, sort of metaphysical and sort of smart-ass and a little bit silly. I’m trying to be a little funny, monkeying around. Things are more evasive now. Things are more disguised."