Main entry:

Bryan-Wilson, Julia, author. aut

Title & Author:

Louise Nevelson's sculpture : drag, color, join, face / Julia Bryan-Wilson.

Publication:

New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, [2023]
©2023

Description:

4 volumes : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
[1]. Drag -- [2]. Color -- [3]. Join -- [4]. Face.
[1]. Drag. "Badness" -- Genderings -- Trawl, Scavenge, Glean -- Belatedness, or What a Drag -- Notes -- Index.
[2]. Color. Material Monochromes -- Blackness, and Blackness -- Blackness as Ground -- Not-Yet-White -- White, Gold, and Gray -- Notes -- Index.
[3]. Join. Conjoinings -- Domestic Bonds -- Attachments -- Assembling and Assemblage -- How Titles Join -- Notes -- Index.
[4]. Face. Portraits and Faciality -- Façades, Walls, Reliefs -- Public Facing -- Facing Wood -- Notes -- Index.

Summary:

"In this radical rethinking of the art of Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Julia Bryan-Wilson provides a long-overdue critical account of a signature figure in postwar sculpture. A Ukraine-born Jewish immigrant, Nevelson persevered in the male-dominated New York art world. Nonetheless, her careful procedures of construction -- in which she assembled found pieces of wood into elaborate structures, usually painted black -- have been little studied. Organized around a series of key operations in Nevelson's own process (dragging, coloring, joining, and facing), the book comprises four slipcased, individually bound volumes that can be read in any order. Both form and content thus echo Nevelson's own modular sculptures, the gridded boxes of which the artist herself rearranged. Exploring how Nevelson's making relates to domesticity, racialized matter, gendered labor, and the environment, Bryan-Wilson offers a sustained examination of the social and political implications of Nevelson's art. The author also approaches Nevelson's sculptures from her own embodied subjectivity as a queer feminist scholar. She forges an expansive art history that places Nevelson's assemblages in dialogue with a wide array of marginalized worldmaking and underlines the artist's proclamation of allegiance to blackness."-- Publisher's website.
"That there are four volumes in the cubic set mirrors the quadrilateral sides of a rectangle, a foundational shape utilized by Nevelson in her collages and gridded walls. Each module is organized around what I propose are four of her central artistic operations or procedures: DRAG, COLOR, JOIN, and FACE. I have listed them here, as well as in the title of this book, in an order that shadows the basic sequence Nevelson enacted in her sculptural practice, though it is by no means prescriptive: first, she hauled objects into her studio (drag); then, she painted these individual elements (color); then, she composed and affixed parts into sculptures (join); and, lastly, she circulated them back out into the world (face). Beyond echoing the contours of her loosely ordered process, each potent word has multiple meanings embedded within it; for example, along with thinking about monochromatic pigments, the volume COLOR contends with issues of racialization. The words perform as action verbs, signaling some of the various critical maneuvers Nevelson enacted within her making starting in the 1950s. They also function as concrete nouns, pointing to her devotion to thingness. At the same time, all four words key into my political claims for how her sculpture gained traction in and beyond the twentieth century. Probing her reception within canonical U.S. art history -- a formation from which she was frequently excluded -- I investigate how Nevelson's work asked questions about gendered labor, material scarcity, and racial differences in the post-World War II era."-- Taken from Drag, pages 4-5.

ISBN:

9780300236705 (set)
0300236700 (set)

Subject:

Nevelson, Louise, 1899-1988 Criticism and interpretation.
Nevelson, Louise, 1899-1988
Sculpture, American 20th century.
Assemblage (Art) United States.
Found objects (Art) United States.
Black.
Wood.
Noir.
Bois.
sculpture (visual works)
assemblages (sculpture)
black (color)
found object sculpture.
wood (plant material)
Sculpture, American

Form/genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Art criticism.
Critiques d'art.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 318526
Call No.: 318526
Copy: 1
Status: Available