Description
Beginning in 1965, Nevelson explored materials such as transparent industrial plastics and enameled metal. Her organization and forms became more geometric and systematic, resulting in more open and less densely packed sculptures. She sought clarity and transparency through both her materials and compositions. Her use of more durable materials for the large-scale walls led her in 1969 to accept her first commission for an outdoor sculpture. In 1971, she was inspired to combine found elements with deliberately fabricated pieces in freestanding constructed sculptures. Botanical imagery predominated in her new welded metal sculptures and their shapes, like their titles, suggest flowers, trees, gardens, and landscapes. MITs Transparent Horizon of 1975 is a part of this phase of Nevelsons development. Its openness, horizontal disposition, and frontality recall her tabletop landscapes of the 1940s, grounded in the Surrealist sculpture of Alberto Giacometti. The piece is an amalgam of two earlier painted aluminum sculptures: Tropical Tree IV of 1972 and Black Flower Series IV of 1973. The revision and transformation of older works by melding them into new ones is typical of Nevelsons sculptural practice. The shorter portion of Transparent Horizon, Tropical Tree, is composed of flat frond-like projections from a trunk-like core. The taller, Black Flower, shows vertical stems and spiky leaf-forms jutting out to the sides, capped by overlapping petal shapes. Her vocabulary of formsimaginative abstractions from and transformations of naturewere influenced by Dada and Surrealist biomorphic abstraction, not only via Giacometti and David Smith but also Jean Arps painted wood reliefs of 1916-17. As the title of the final sculpture indicates, the piece gives the impression of plant-like verticals rising from a landscape while simultaneously suggesting elements of a gate or passage. Nevelson herself has stated that it stands like this door, straight and frontal you dont see it standing isolated, you see it extending the environment becomes its frame. This frame is a constant image and organizing principle in her boxes, reliefs, and walls and is indebted to the sculpture of her friend David Smith, for whom the planar, frontal space-frame was a lifelong and constant theme. Nevelson considered herself an architect of shadows and maker of spectral shapes and primordial images. The forms in MITs sculpture suggest botanical processes of growth and decay. Transparent Horizon stands like a totem: somber, enigmatic, and magical.
Details
- Work Date:
- 1975
- Location:
- Room No. 1
- Dimensions:
- 240 in. x 252 in. x 97 in. (609.6 cm x 640.08 cm x 246.38 cm)
- Medium:
- Welded Cor-ten steel, painted
- Credit Line:
- Purchased with MIT Percent-for-Art Funds