Art@Site www.artatsite.com Louise Nevelson Atmosphere and Environment XII Philadelphia
Artist:

Louise Nevelson

Title:

Atmosphere and Environment XII

Year:
1970
Adress:
University of Pennsylvania
Website:
Every day is different.
Sometimes the day feels like a circle. Than a job is finished. Or I’ve been on my own that day.
Another day feels like a rainbow. Circles are laying in a row. I would make this drawing because of the companion of friends who match with each other.
A day like a s-shape is difficult to explain. This is a day with maneuvers, with tuning on each other, with moving together.
Another day feels like a square. This is a good day but doesn’t have my preference. This is would be a day on my own but with others colliding.
I really hate the day that looks like two crossed lines. Then I think of confrontation, differences, hardness, intransigence.
Today is my favorite day, would Winnie the Pooh say. But this is a joke. Now seriously; my favorite days like look like a rainbow or an s-shape.
By Theo, www.artatsite.com

Vertaling
Elke dag is anders.
Soms voelt de dag als een cirkel. Dan heb ik een klus geklaard. Of dan ben ik de dag op mijzelf geweest.
Een andere dag voelt als een regenboog. Dan liggen cirkels achter elkaar. Deze tekening zou ik maken vanwege samenzijn met vrienden die op elkaar afgestemd zijn.
Een dag als een s-vorm is moeilijk uit te leggen. Dit is een dag met manoeuvreren, op elkaar afgestemd zijn, samen bewegen.
Weer een andere dag voelt als een vierkant. Deze dag is goed maar heeft niet mijn voorkeur. Dit zou een dag zijn dat ik op mijzelf ben maar dat dit botst op anderen.
Ik heb ronduit een hekel aan de dag die eruit ziet als twee gekruiste lijnen. Dan denk ik aan confrontatie, verschil, hardheid, onverzettelijkheid.
Today is mijn favoriete dag, zou Winnie de Poeh zeggen. Maar dit is een grapje tussendoor. Even serieus: mijn favoriete dagen zien eruit als een regenboog of een s-vorm.
Door Theo, www.artatsite.com

www.associationforpublicart.org:
Within the cubes are additional geometrical shapes, and the entire openwork composition seems to echo the landscape of a modern city.

www.associationforpublicart.org:
Atmosphere and Environment XII is a product of the mature style of Louise Nevelson, one of the most influential artists of the decades following World War II. In the late 1950s, Nevelson conceived of wooden collage 'environments,' wall-like sculptures painted entirely in one color and incorporating a myriad of abstract forms. Her interest in theater influenced both her concept of sculpture-as-environment and her use of vertical structures resembling stage sets.

www.artmuseum.princeton.edu:
Louise Nevelson: 'I gave myself the title. You see shadow and everything else on earth actually is moving. Movement – that’s in color, that’s in form, that’s in almost everything. Shadow is fleeting . . . and I arrest it and I give it a solid substance.'

www.artmuseum.princmosphere and Environment X, by Louise Nevelson, is a two-dimensional, architectonic screen that achieves its magic through the play of natural light over its geometric surface. Nevelson had a penchant for the rectilinear format, in which shapes and patterns, rhythms and accents repeat and can be read in a narrative fashion. Nevelson’s work was inspired by her collections of African art and American farm tools as well as by her interest in pre-Columbian art and architecture; one also finds the influence of Byzantine art and its Russian derivatives. The artist was over fifty when she began to create the extraordinary shadow box reliefs and walls of wood that constitute her masterworks. She was nearly seventy when she undertook this Princeton commission, her first monumental outdoor sculpture in Cor-Ten steel.

www.chicagopublicart.blogspot.nl:
Famous for his emphasis on the 'push and pull' necessary to create a balanced abstract composition, Hofmann’s influence helped Nevelson to find her sistyle, characterized by the use of found objects and architectural elements, joined together into a grid-like formation and painted a uniform color, typically black but sometimes white or gold.
While her wooden wall pieces are usually displayed indoors, this work demonstrates her ability to translate her approach into an outdoor work, utilizing pieces of scrap and cut aluminum, welded together and given a monochromatic finish. The Madison Plaza Building in the Loop once featured another outdoor Nevelson piece, but it has since been moved into the lobby and photography is not allowed.
Born in Kiev in 1899, Leah Berliawsky emigrated with her family from Russia to Maine in 1905.
A cousin helped the family to Anglicize their names, thus she became Louise, and she later married wealthy businessman Charles Nevelson and settled in New York City. In addition to studying at the Art Students League, in 1931 she traveled to Munich to work with legendary teacher, painter and catalyst of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Hans Hofmann.

www.wikipedia.org:
Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures.
Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine), she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century. Nevelson learned English at school, as she spoke Yiddish at home.
By the early 1930s she was attending art classes at the Art Students League of New York, and in 1941 she had her first solo exhibition. A student of Hans Hofmann and Chaim Gross, Nevelson experimented with early conceptual art using found objects, and dabbled in painting and printing before dedicating her lifework to sculpture. Usually created out of wood, her sculptures appear puzzle-like, with multiple intricately cut pieces placed into wall sculptures or independently standing pieces, often 3-D. One unique feature of her work is that her figures a often painted in monochromatic black or white. A figure in the international art scene, Nevelson was showcased at the 31st Venice Biennale. Her work is seen in major collections in museums and corporations. Nevelson remains one of the most important figures in 20th-century American sculpture.
When Nevelson was developing her style, many of her artistic colleagues – Alexander Calder, David Smith, Theodore Roszak – were welding metal to create their large-scale sculptures. Nevelson decided to go in the opposite direction, exploring the streets for inspiration and finding it in wood. Nevelson's most notable sculptures are her walls; wooden, wall-like collage driven reliefs consisting of multiple boxes and compartments that hold abstract shapes and found objects from chair legs to balusters. Nevelson described these immersive sculptures"environments". The wooden pieces were also cast-off scraps, pieces found in the streets of New York. While Marcel Duchamp caused uproar with his Fountain, which was not accepted as "art" at the time of its release in 1917 due to Duchamp's attempt to mask the urinals true form, Nevelson took found objects and by spray painting them she disguised them of their actual use or meaning. Nevelson called herself "the original recycler" owing to her extensive use of discarded objects, and credited Pablo Picasso for "giving us the cube" that served as the groundwork for her cubist-style sculpture. She found strong influence in Picasso and Hofmann's cubist ideals, describing the Cubist movement as "one of the greatest awarenesses that the human mind has ever come to." She also found influence in Native American and Mayan art, dreams, the cosmos and archetypes. A less known but very strong influence was that of Joaquín Torres García, a Uruguayan artist wh"in the United States was probably underrated precisely because he was so influential; Adolph Gottlieb's and Louise Nevelson's debt to his work has never been fully acknowledged".
As a student of Hans Hofmann she was taught to practice her art with a limited palette, using colors such as black and white, to "discipline" herself. These colors would become part of Nevelson's repertoire. She spray painted her walls black until 1959. Nevelson described black as the "total color" that "means totality. It means: contains all ... it contained all color. It wasn't a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all. The only aristocratic color ... I have seen things that were transformed into black, that took on greatness. I don't want to use a lesser word." In the 1960s she began incorporating white and gold into her works. Nevelson said that white was the color that "summoned the early morning and emotional promise." She described her gold phase as the "baroque phase", inspired by the idea being told as a child that America's streets would be "paved with gold", the materialism and hedonism of the color, the Sun, and the Moon. Nevelson revisited the Noh robes and the gold coin collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for inspiration.
Through her work, Nevelson often explored the themes of her complicated past, factious present, and anticipated future.] A common symbol that appears in Nevelson's work is the bride, as seen in Bride of the Black Moon (1955). The symbol of the bride referred to Nevelson's own escape from matrimony in her early life, and her own independence as a woman throughout the rest of her life.] Her Sky Cathedral works often took years to create; Sky Cathedral: Night Wall, in the collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, took 13 years to build in her New York City studio. On the Sky Cathedral series, Nevelson commented: "This is the Universe, the stars, the moon – and you and I, everyon"