In the right hands, any medium can become art.
Louise Nevelson often described her work — such as Tide Garden IV — as existing in an “in-between place,” a union of painting and sculpture.
Influenced by Cubism’s abstracted geometry, as well as Mexican and African objects, Nevelson emerged as an artist in New York City alongside Abstract Expressionist painters, with whom she shared an interest in creating large scale works with an overall surface patterning.
Nevelson’s work began much smaller in scale, but as her individual voice and the Abstract Expressionist movement gained momentum, her large, often room- sized installations developed monumental presence.
The found wood materials comprising Tide Garden IV were scavenged from trash piles around New York. This method echoes her upbringing in Rockland, Maine.
Her father had been in the lumber trade in Ukraine (formerly Imperial Russia), and after emigrating to the United States, he initially worked as a junk and scrap dealer before finally owning a lumberyard.
Using wood, architecturally shaped forms, and pieces from furniture and buildings, her sculpture is a prime example of Nevelson’s lifetime meditation on the relationship between humans and their environment — shaping that relationship into an impressive personal landscape.
Nevelson’s choice to paint the entire work black highlights the play of light and shadow between the wood pieces while describing the flat, black color as representing “the totality of everything.”
Nevelson forged a unique, often solitary, path in mid century New York, particularly as a woman in a male- dominated art scene.
Her work aligns in various ways with Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, and yet she never belonged to one particular movement.
