In Maine, highlighting Louise Nevelson, a giant of American Modernism
WATERVILLE — What was Maine to louise nevelson, who landed in rockland in 1905 at age 6 with her family? A stop, and as brief a one as she could make it. ‘’i never made friends,’’ she told one biographer, years later, ‘’because i didn’t intend to stay in rockland, and i didn’t want anything to tie me down.’’ she would pack up and ship out for new York in 1920, where she would spend the next seven decades evolving into a cosmopolitan art world doyenne, arrayed in long, flowing silk robes and false eyelashes made from mink fur. Maine, cold and distant, may as well have been the moon.
What nevelson is to Maine is something else entirely, though. in two of the state’s major art institutions this spring, nevelson’s at center stage: At the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, “the World outside: louise nevelson at Midcentury” puts on display works from large-scale sculpture to printmaking, products of a fertile and exuberant time. At the farnsworth Museum in her hometown of rockland, “louise nevelson: dusk to dawn” is a similar, if smaller, take on the artist’s evolution and practice from early painting, sculpture, and even jewelry-making. (nevelson reconciled with her adopted home just a few years before her death in 1988. rockland, in many ways, had saved her, when her family fled antisemitism in what’s now ukraine, and many of the works in both shows she gifted to the museums herself ).
something the two shows share, inevitably, is the entrancing inscrutability hard-wired into almost every nevelson work. in the entry hall at Colby, stand in front of “Cascade,” 1964, with its dense quilt of black fragments and volumes, and you can feel a tug from within its soft darkness, like vertigo from the edge of a cliff. At the farnsworth, the crisp, repeating patterns of “the endless Column,” 1969-85, are almost hypnotic, a calming, rhythmic frame for the enigma it contains.
that’s how it is with so many nevelson sculptures; her best-known works are suggestive but elusive monuments to her seductive formal logic. she once called herself an “architect of shadow,” and i can do no better that that. pieces like “night-focus-dawn,” 1969, carve crisp lines that reorder darkness and light into visual mystery as captivating as it is opaque. in 1959, she presented an array of her works in a gallery lit only by cool, dim blue light, challenging the viewer — and the art world — to see art as an experience beyond object and materials; she called it “Moon garden + one,” an homage to the burgeoning space race. one of those works is here at Colby, basking in chilly azure; it shimmers, flat black, brimming with the cryptic wonder nevelson pursued all her life.
Cobbled from scraps of wood — broken furniture or off-cut lumber often salvaged from trash and rubble — nevelson’s works have a particular magic, chaos conjured into eloquent, cohesive wholes, most often painted a dense, flat black. the riddles of their shape and proportion tease with hints of the almost familiar, like glyphs or runes from a civilization gone to dust. they speak crisply and clearly in what feels like a lost language; you can’t know what they mean, but you can’t stop looking for answers. they’re a rare gift to the limitlessness of the imagination.
it’s been almost 40 years since nevelson died in 1988, in her spring street studio in new York’s soho, surrounded by a lifetime of work and the accolades she’d gathered with it. A flamboyant, willing center of attention, she arrived at her end-of-career stature as an icon of American Modernism after decades of fits and starts. At Colby, “the World outside” is geared towards her early experiments — compulsions, really, to cobble for herself a life in art by any means necessary.
What might be the first black wood composite piece she ever made, from 1950 and about the size of a hardcover book, hangs near the entrance, a seductive avatar for what’s to come. like the show itself, the piece is an elegant primer on the world nevelson had to fashion for herself and never stopped making until the very end.
she was born in 1899 just south of Kyiv as leah beliawsky; her early life saw her family rebuilding from the scraps and leavings of an unforgiving world. her father left in 1902 to establish a foothold in America, and nevelson and her mother and siblings followed three years later as persecution of Jews in russian-controlled territories intensified. nevelson arrived speaking no english, leaving her to piece together a childhood from the snippets she could grasp in a strange new place.
“the World outside” doesn’t dwell much on biography; i wish it did a little more. i can’t look at her work and not think of it as a lifelong personal mission to prove order, and beauty, could come from her fractured beginnings. nevelson’s mission to become an artist — this artist, an artist who conjured a holistic sublime from neglect—feels like less a commitment than a genetic imperative.
she left rockland in 1920 as the new bride of a wealthy new York executive, Charles nevelson; within a decade, the marriage had dissolved, and nevelson had sent their son, Mike, to live with her family in rockland so she could focus on her art. she wandered depression-era new York streets hunting for scraps and living on next-to-nothing; her brother, who ran a hotel in rockland, sent her money to survive. she endured decades of slights from critics who first praised her work, then dismissed it when they learned the artist was a woman; every piece in the exhibition is a monument to a life she would not be denied.
pick one from the astonishing array of riches here, really, and you’ll see what i mean: “sky Chapel no. 1,” 195859; “tidal Wave and Moon,” 1960, painted shimmering gold; “rain forest Wall,” 1967. “dawn’s Wedding Chapel ii,” 1959, all in warm, creamy white, lives as an act of joyful defiance. nevelson, finally gaining momentum after years of struggle, made it for “16 Americans” at the Museum of Modern Art, a groundbreaking exhibition in 1959 of ascendent artists that included frank stella and robert rauschenberg. she would turn 60 that year, decades older than her peers. in the throes of her first real recognition, nevelson took not a bow, but a sharp turn. it feels like a pivot point: A lifetime pieced together from scraps, finally made whole.