Description:
smoky glass cube with metal binding on clear plexiglass base; abstract
Label Text:
West Coast artist Larry Bell began his career in the 1960's as a painter of shaped canvases and illusionistic, nesting cubes that seemed to project outward from the surface of the painting. These developed into three-dimensional sculptures, which relinquished their geometric surface patterns and became pristine cubes, such as this one. The chemically bonded mineral layer on the glass surfaces acts to refract and reflect light, creating a more subtle optical effect. The artist intended the Plexiglas base on which the cube is displayed to allow these interactions to play out.
This sculpture is an example of minimalist art, a movement counter to the figurative, popular culture themes of Pop Art of the 60s. Minimalism emphasized the essential "objecthood" of the work of art and the use of industrial materials, modular geometric forms and seriality. However, unlike most minimalist art, Bell's cubes have surfaces that are not "mute" or matte, but instead are continually enlivened the shifting color and light.
Tags:
abstract Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1972.7 |
