Nevelson was sui generis. Though a quintessential modernist, she was no joiner. During her long life of artistic activity, she studied Cubism, flirted with Surrealism, and imbibed the influence of Minimalism, but no avant-garde movement could claim her. She was Mark Rothko's favorite sculptor, but she wasn't hanging out with the Ab-Ex crowd at the Cedar Tavern. Jed Perl, who gives her short shrift in New Art City, his survey of mid-20th-century Manhattan's artistic avant-gardes, links her work with the sculptor Richard Stankiewicz's "junkyard Constructivism." But Stankiewicz (a generation younger) and David Smith (her nearer contemporary) were welders, while she worked with the regenerative capacities of wood, a once-living medium. And the room-size environments she began fabricating in the 1960s preceded the advent of installation art by some 20 years.

previously on schwarz
- bill 5-16-2007 6:23 pm [add a comment]

Rothko 79 Million last nite auction someone told me
- Skinny 5-17-2007 12:37 am [add a comment]

wow

An important painting by Mark Rothko offered for sale by the Rockefeller family at Sotheby's fetched 73 million dollars - more than triple the previous record price for the artist.

- bill 5-17-2007 1:40 am [add a comment]

Wow is right! darn. I would rather have the Prouve house and then some...
- b. 5-17-2007 1:54 am [add a comment]

My batshit crazy friend Anthony (with the unreadable blog design) reported on some of the sales in that post war Sotheby auction.
- L.M. 5-17-2007 2:14 am [add a comment]

green car crash and check back w/ anthony for the bat shits


- bill 5-17-2007 10:04 pm [add a comment]

With Warhol, at least we have proof that money is immune to irony.
- alex 5-18-2007 4:40 am [add a comment]

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