Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol.original_ [128]
The relation — or its lack — between individuals had long been Bourgeois’ preoccupation. She titled a sculpture “One and Others,” saying, “This is the soil from which all my work grows.”
As a girl Bourgeois studied geometry at the Sorbonne, finding refuge from her fears and anxieties in mathematical precision. When she took up art with Cubist painter Léger, she worked hard to be mathematically correct. “You don’t have to be so rigid and precise,” Léger told her. “You can push geometry around a bit.”
Bourgeois, “Quarantania, I,” 1948-53, MoMA, NY. Bourgeois is known for her carved wood ensembles.
NEVELSON: BEYOND THE WALL. “I didn’t want it to be sculpture and I didn’t want it to be painting,” said American sculptor Louise Nevelson (1900-88) of her work. “I wanted something else. I wanted an essence.” The “essence” Nevelson created is a novel art form. Her characteristic “sculptured walls” consist of cubicles crammed full of carpenter’s cast-offs: newel posts, balusters, finials, and pieces of molding. She painted an entire 11-foot-high wooden wall, composed of many boxy compartments, one color: usually flat black, later white or gold. “I have given shadow a form,” said Nevelson.
As a child newly arrived from Russia, in Rockland, Maine, where her father ran a lumber yard, Nevelson was always sure of her artistic calling. “My life had a blueprint from the beginning, and that is the reason that I don’t need to make blueprints or drawings for my sculpture. What I am saying is that I did not become anything. I was an artist.” Through years without recognition, “the only thing that kept me going,” Nevelson said, “was that I wouldn’t be appeased.”
Nevelson, “Sky Cathedral,” 1958, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. A pioneer of environmental sculpture, Nevelson made wall-sized collages of discarded wood scraps.
COLOR FIELD
In the late 1940s and early ’50s a few New York School painters spun off a variation on Action Painting where vast expanses, or “fields” of color became the focus. “Color Field” painting was invariably abstract, and canvases were huge, almost mural-size.
IVY LEAGUE MATERIAL
In the early’60s, Mark Rothko proposed to donate a triptych and two large murals to Harvard University. Then-president of Harvard, Nathan Pusey, who had only the faintest knowledge of abstract art, arrived at Rothko’s studio one morning to inspect the gift. The stocky Rothko, dressed like a disreputable housepainter, poured his guest a shot of whiskey in a paint-smeared glass. Pusey stared at “miles” of Rothko rectangles like dominoes minus the spots. Rothko stared at Pusey. “Well, what do you think of them?” Rothko finally asked. Uncertain of a suitable reply, Pusey said, “Rather sad.” Rothko’s face lit up: Pusey was “right on the beam.”
ROTHKO: BLURRED RECTANGLES. “There are some painters who want to tell all,” said Russian-American Mark Rothko (1903-70), “but I feel it is more shrewd to tell little.” While Rothko told little, he suggested volumes in his eight-foot-high paintings consisting of two or three soft-edged, stacked rectangles.
Interested in the relation between one color and another, Rothko built up large patches of pigment that seem to hover within their color fields. Erasing all evidence of brushstrokes, he also eliminated recognizable subject matter. In a joint statement with painter Adolf Gottlieb, Rothko wrote, “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought.” As his paintings became simpler, they became larger. “A large picture is an immediate transaction,” Rothko said, “it takes you into it.”
As Rothko slipped into depression and alcoholism, his paintings lost their hushed, calm aura, becoming dark and melancholy. His murals for the St. Thomas University chapel in Houston are black, brown, and eggplant purple. A year later, he took his life.
Rothko, “Blue, Orange,