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Maker(s):McClelland, Suzanne
Culture:American (1959- )
Title:Never
Date Made:1991
Type:Painting
Materials:mixed media; clay, acrylic, charcoal and gesso on canvas
Measurements:stretcher: 72 x 72 in.; 182.88 x 182.88 cm
Accession Number:  AC 2000.418
Credit Line:Gift of Steven M. Jacobson (Class of 1953)
Museum Collection:  Mead Art Museum at Amherst College
2000-418.jpg

Description:
Abstract composition, the word "never" is spelled out with the large "n" on its side in the lower right, the letter "e" in white, also on its side, its "leg" touching the upper edge. "v" is hidden in indigo against the black ground, next to the "e" in the upper edge and the "e" and "r" camouflaged within the white shape, float towards the left lower edge.

Label Text:
As Suzanne McClelland has put it, painting “is a combination of marks and stains and smudges and spills—all those things that can be considered mistakes.” In Never, painting is shown to be “all those things”: passages of velvety matte black, but also of watery black stain; passages of glossy, translucent pooling but also of gritty lumps of clay, like splattered mud. Along the right edge, exposed canvas ripples as if improperly stretched, while a crude, vertical charcoal line just inside that edge suggests some contour or limit that the painting has clearly exceeded. Certainly this work’s edges seem important here. The composition’s baffling, organic forms press up against them almost centrifugally, fleeing the center in order to mark the periphery. In this way they imply a stretching black field or space beyond the painting, too. (Kate Nesin, 2021)

Tags:
abstract; text

Subjects:
Women artists; Art, Abstract; text (layout feature); Canvas

Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2000.418

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