The Brooklyn Rail

Throughout her career, Louise Nevelson drew inspiration from New York City. When she first arrived in 1920, she was impressed by the skyscrapers, especially the radical, triangular Flatiron building. Later that decade, she watched the construction of the Empire State Building, and in the 1950s she witnessed the destruction of tenements in Kips Bay, from which she scavenged many wood fragments and pieces of furniture for her sculptures. She once remarked that, “if you take a few minutes to recognize what New York stands for, it’s the greatest collage in the world.”¹

Collection View: Louise Nevelson, now on view at the Whitney, re-examines the influence of the cityscape on Nevelson’s work. The exhibition uses the east-facing glass façade of the fifth-floor galleries to place more than fifteen sculptures in dialogue with the surrounding architecture on Gansevoort Street. Since the Whitney organized the artist’s first retrospective in 1967, it has assembled a vast collection of her sculptures, drawings, and prints. This presentation focuses entirely on black monochromes, including early assemblages, iconic wall pieces and column sculptures, and later works that combine horizontal and vertical elements.

Two groupings on raised floating platforms bring the sculptures into conversation with the buildings outside. At the entrance to the exhibition, the 1985 wood construction Present Universe III is paired with three works from the “Rain Forest Column” series, which Nevelson debuted in the 1960s. Present Universe III features a T-shaped pedestal supporting two branches that create an open rectangular structure. This armature contains a combination of cylindrical and rectangular forms that together resemble a kind of machine part. It’s an unusual composition for Nevelson, evoking a David Smith “Cubi,” but serves as a fitting starting point because the sculpture mimics a window, allowing the viewer to see through to the cityscape in the distance. In contrast, Rain Forest Column XII (1967) suggests a totem pole composed of layered wood strips and curved furniture fragments. Nevelson’s signature columns have multiple sources, including Mayan ruins and subway posts. In her words, “the columns in the subway had as much meaning as many of the things that are in museums.”² In this case, the sculpture is positioned to echo the vertical lines on the facades of the meatpacking warehouses across the street.

On the other side of the room, a selection of terracotta and cast stone “Moving-Static-Moving Figures” (1945–1948), are masterfully arranged at varying heights to reflect the jagged skyline behind them. These early sculptures establish Nevelson’s abilities as a builder. Suspended clay or stone blocks in various geometric forms fit together like puzzle pieces along a central metal dowel. Combining surrealist and cubist influences, she inscribed the wet terracotta with faces and lines that resemble automatic writing. There is a toy-like quality to these works, whose pieces can be rotated along the dowel and interchanged from one work to another to create different compositions.

In 1957 Nevelson began working with boxes, an artistic breakthrough that would go on to shape her practice. She stacked them, filled them with assemblages of wood shards, pieces of furniture, and other found objects, and drenched them in black paint. The exhibition’s wall text explains that Nevelson was first inspired to do this when she received a case of liquor for Christmas—this is the anecdote offered by Colette Roberts, Nevelson’s dealer, but there are several different origin stories for Nevelson’s fascination with milk containers and other crates. These include her being inspired by rug boxes on the street or her being gifted boxes by her brother-in-law who operated a glass factory.³

Whereas Nevelson’s freestanding sculptures are porous to the space around them, wall works such as Young Shadows (1959–60) and Black Chord (1964) have the solidity of altars or ancient architecture. Young Shadows is composed of square and rectangular boxes of varying sizes forming a jagged top edge. The collages inside each container layer flat wood scraps onto one another, shaping them into geometric forms. They appear recessed, giving the impression that we view the contents of each box from above. By contrast, the masterpiece Black Chord is composed of equal sized boxes in a grid formation, resembling a building facade. Although some of the boxes resemble each other, displaying a similar use of horizontal or vertical strips, the objects arranged behind the slats are always different. Looking closely at each box is engrossing, as you strive to see shapes that are partially hidden, try to identify the objects Nevelson has repurposed, and observe the play of light and shadow across curled and spindled forms. It’s a voyeuristic experience, like snatching glimpses into apartment windows.

In her solo exhibitions, Nevelson typically arranged her sculptures to create a complete environment. In several instances, she positioned sculptures near gallery windows to create a dramatic play of light and shadow. Her 1956 show The Royal Voyage of the King and the Queen of the Sea, for example, utilized the windows at Grand Central Moderns Gallery. For her 1959 solo exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery, the second-floor landing opposite the building’s glass facade featured a grouping of suspended columns and stacked boxes. Collection View: Louise Nevelson offers the opportunity to view Nevelson’s works in a context reminiscent of their original display conditions. More than that, the way the works are installed reinforces their relationship with the urban landscape. As the light changes throughout the day the experience of the artwork shifts. During my visit on a sunny morning, an initially dramatic contrast of light and dark softened. Watching the light play on the sculptures with the skyline in background is a quintessential New York experience.