| That Louise Nevelson is believed by
many critics to be the greatest twentieth-century sculptor is all the more
remarkable because the greatest resistance to women artists has been, until
recently, in the field of sculpture. Since Neolithic times, sculpture has been
considered the prerogative of men, partly, perhaps, for purely physical reasons:
it was erroneously assumed that women were not suited for the hard manual labor
required in sculpting stone, carving wood, or working in metal. It has been only
during the twentieth century that women sculptors have been recognized as major
artists, and it has been in the United States, especially since the decades of
the fifties and sixties, that women sculptors have shown the greatest
originality and creative power. Their rise to prominence parallels the
development of sculpture itself in the United States: while there had been a few
talented sculptors in the United States before the 1940’s, it was only after
1945 — when New York was rapidly becoming the art capital of the world — that
major sculpture was produced in the United States. Some of the best was the work
of women. By far the most outstanding of these women is Louise Nevelson, who in the eyes of many critics is the most original female artist alive today. One famous and influential critic, Hilton Kramer, said of her work, “For myself, I think Ms. Nevelson succeeds where the painters often fail.” Her works have been compared to the Cubist constructions of Picasso, the Surrealistic objects of Miro, and the Merzbau of Schwitters. Nevelson would be the first to admit that she has been influenced by all of these, as well as by African sculpture, and by Native American and pre-Columbian art, but she has absorbed all these influences and still created a distinctive art that expresses the urban landscape and the aesthetic sensibility of the twentieth century. Nevelson says, “I have always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except that it has to pass through a creative mind.” Using mostly discarded wooden objects like packing crates, broken pieces of furniture, and abandoned architectural ornaments, all of which she has hoarded for years, she assembles architectural constructions of great beauty and power. Creating very freely with no sketches, she glues and nails objects together, paints them black, or more rarely white or gold, and places them in boxes. These assemblages, walls, even entire environments create a mysterious, almost awe-inspiring atmosphere. Although she has denied any symbolic or religious intent in her works, their three-dimensional grandeur and even their titles, such as Sky Cathedral and Night Cathedral, suggest such connotations. In some ways, her most ambitious works are closer to architecture than to traditional sculpture, but then neither Louise Nevelson nor her art fits into any neat category. |