Black Garden Wall III
Artist
Louise Nevelson
(American, 1899–1988)
Date1971
Mediumpainted wood and formica
Dimensions218.4 x 111.8 x 17.8 cm (86 x 44 x 7 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineSarah C. Garver Fund
Object number1976.42
Label TextLouise Nevelson began making her now-legendary monochromatic wall sculptures in the mid-1950s. Black Garden Wall III is composed of eight separate boxes organized into an irregular grid of multiple compartments filled with salvaged pieces of wood and architectural ornaments. By painting the entire work matte black, Nevelson unified these disparate elements into a powerful and coherent whole and shrouded their individual identities or social histories. Here they function abstractly as compositional details, creating shifts in scale and a complex play of straight lines and curves, flatness and recession, volume and void, light and shadow. Nevelson achieved an innovative hybrid of the found and the invented, the familiar and mysterious.
On View
On view
