Constructions and Assemblage
John Chamberlain.
A most successful example of junk sculpture, and a
puzzling borderline case of assemblage and sculpture, is Essex
(fig.
1159) by John
Chamberlain (born 1927).
The title refers to a make of car that has not been on the market for
many years, suggesting that the object is a kind of homage to a vanished
species. But we may well doubt that these pieces of enameled tin ever
had so specific an origin. They have been carefully selected for their
shape and color, and composed in such a way that they form a new entity,
evoking Duchamp-Villon's The Great Horse (fig.
1128) rather than the crumpled
automobiles to which they once belonged. Whether we prefer to call
Essex assemblage or sculpture is of little importance, but in trying
to reach a decision we gain a better insight into the qualities that
constitute its appeal.
1159. John Chamberlain.
Essex. 1960.
Automobile body parts and other metal,
274.3 x
203.2 x 109.2 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
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John
Chamberlain
John Chamberlain, (born April 16, 1927, Rochester, Ind.,
U.S.), U.S. Abstract Expressionist sculptor whose work is
characterized by an emotional approach to concept and
execution.
After study at the Art Institute of
Chicago, where he began working in metals, and at Black
Mountain College in North Carolina (1955–56), he had his
first one-man show in Chicago in 1957. Chamberlain’s
sculptures are typified by “Mr. Press” (1961), a
construction of fragments from automobiles, crumpled and
jammed together to create an effect of isolated, frozen
movement. He often coated his pieces with bright industrial
paints.
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John Chamberlain. Untitled
John Chamberlain. Untitled Wall Sculpture
John Chamberlain. Nutcracker
John Chamberlain. Big E
Louise Nevelson.
Although it is almost always made entirely of wood, the work of
Louise Nevelson
(1900-1988)
must be classified as assemblage, and when extended to a
monumental scale, it acquires the status of an environment. Before
Nevelson, there had not been any important women sculptors in
twentieth-century America. Sculpture had traditionally been reserved for
men because of the manual labor involved. Thanks to the women's suffrage
movement in the second half of the nineteenth century, Harriet Hosmer
(1830-1908) and her "White
Marmorean Flock" (as the novelist Henry James called her and her
followers in Rome) had succeeded in legitimizing sculpture as a medium
for women. This school of sculpture lapsed, however, when the
sentimental, idealizing Neoclassical style fell out of favor after the
Philadelphia Centennial of 1876.
In the 1950s Nevelson
rejected external reality and began to construct a private one from her
collection of found pieces of wood, both carved and rough. At first
these self-contained realms were miniature cityscapes, but they soon
grew into large environments of free-standing "buildings," encrusted
with decorations that were inspired by the sculpture on Mayan ruins.
Nevelson s work generally took the form of large wall units that flatten
her architecture into reliefs (fig. 1160).
Assembled from individual compartments, the whole is always painted a
single color, usually a matte black to suggest the shadowy world of
dreams. Each compartment is elegantly designed and is itself a metaphor
of thought or experience. While the organization of the ensemble is
governed by an inner logic, the entire statement remains an enigmatic
monument to the artist's fertile imagination.
1160.
Louise Nevelson. Black
Chord. 1964. Painted wood, 2.44 m x 3.05 m x
29.2 cm.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
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Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson, née Berliawsky (born September 23?,
1899/1900, Kiev—died April 17, 1988, New York City),
American sculptor known for her large, monochromatic
abstract sculptures and environments in wood and other
materials.
In 1905 she moved with her family from the Ukraine to
Rockland, Me. She married businessman Charles Nevelson in
1920 and later left her husband and child to pursue her
artistic ambitions. In 1929 she began studying with Kenneth
Hayes Miller at the Art Students League in New York City,
and in 1931 she studied with Hans Hofmann in Munich.
Nevelson’s first individual exhibition was held in New
York City in 1941. Her early figurative sculptures in wood,
terra-cotta, bronze, and plaster (e.g., “Ancient Figure,”
1932) show a preoccupation with blockish, interlocking
masses that recall the sculpture of Central America (where
she traveled in the 1940s) and anticipate her mature style.
It was also in the figurative work that her characteristic
found objects (objets trouvés) first appeared, here as
stylized features and appendages (e.g., “The Circus Clown,”
1942).
After enduring years of poverty and critical neglect,
Nevelson by the 1950s had both developed her mature
sculptural style and begun to earn significant critical
recognition. By this time she was working almost exclusively
with abstract forms. She is best-known for works dating from
this period; these consist of open-faced wooden boxes that
are stacked to make freestanding walls. Within the boxes are
displayed carefully arranged and highly suggestive
collections of abstract-shaped objects mingled with chair
legs, pieces of balustrades, and other found objects and
pieces of bric-a-brac. The boxes and their contents are
painted a single colour, usually black, though she coloured
sculptures in white or gold as well. These accumulations of
architectural debris and vaguely recognizable objects elicit
a sense of mystery and antiquity while also achieving
infinitely varied formal tensions between the objects so
displayed, thanks to her skill at arranging them. Many of
these pieces bear mystical titles (e.g., “Sky Cathedral,”
1958; “Silent Music II,” 1964; “Sky Gate—New York,” one of
her largest wall sculptures, World Trade Center, New York
City, 1978).
Major museums began purchasing Nevelson’s wall sculptures
in the late 1950s, and in the following decades she won
recognition as one of the foremost sculptors of the second
half of the 20th century. In 1967 the first major
retrospective of her work was presented at the Whitney
Museum of American Art in New York City. During the 1970s
and ’80s Nevelson expanded the variety of materials used in
her sculptures, incorporating objects made of aluminum,
Plexiglas, and Lucite.
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