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Black Moon
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Not on view
The human proportions of Louise Nevelson’s "Black Moon" evoke the presence of a mysterious personage. On one level Black Moon is a symbolic self-portrait of the artist, who said of a related sculpture, “Bride of the Black Moon [1955] is me, of course.” Matrimony was a potent theme for Nevelson, reflecting her unhappy marriage to her husband as well as her more fulfilling “marriage” to her art.
Drawing on the fusion of faces and glyphs that appears in the monumental Maya limestone column at Quiriguá, Guatemala, and also in the famous Aztec Sun Stone in Mexico City, the totemic "Black Moon" resonated with the Abstract Expressionists’ interest in archetypes and successfully bridged the philosophical divide that separated abstraction and figuration during the 1950s. Nevelson’s resurrection of found objects and cast-off materials also offers a lesson about the transformational power of art.
- Artist
- Louise Nevelson
- Title
- Black Moon
- Date
- 1959
- Object Type
- Sculpture
- Medium
- Wood, paint, and nails
- Dimensions
- 78 1/8 x 30 x 14 1/4 in.
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase, Dr. Leland A. and Gladys K. Barber Fund, Ednah Root Endowment Fund and American Art Trust Fund
- Accession Number
- 2007.79