Laocoon
Artist
Nancy Graves
(American, 1939–1995)
Date1988
Mediumstainless steel, bronze, polychrome patina, black enamel
Dimensions100.3 x 203.2 x 160 cm (39 1/2 x 80 x 63 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineEliza S. Paine Fund
Terms
Object number1999.303
Label TextMuch has been written about Nancy Graves as a child frequenting the Berkshire Museum where her father worked in their hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and there experiencing the collections and practices of both the arts and natural sciences. This early exposure to an interdisciplinary approach to the visual world seems to have guided her aesthetic practice throughout her distinguished career as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and filmmaker as well as her deliberate allusions to both natural history and art history. The visual arabesques and complex balancing of elements in Laocoön clearly reminded Graves of the dramatic movement and energy in the famous Hellenistic sculpture of that name. When asked how the role of color in her sculptures contrasts with the faithful detail of the cast objects, urging them toward abstraction, Graves observed that color can make the forms heavier or lighter and defy gravity visually as well as impose “a second composition that can augment or contend with its form and structure.” In its convergence of natural phenomena, found artifacts, and abstraction, Graves’ Laocoön articulates connections and linkages—from part to whole, from observation to experience, from the individual to the world.On View
Not on view
