Louise Nevelsons lived a dramatic and fascinating life. Hers was a long journey from a childhood in a Jewish family in Eastern Europe to success as an artist and feminist icon in the US.
Nevelson’s art is not easily labeled to a specific style, but has been variously associated with Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism. As a female artist in a male-dominated Modernist tradition, she became a pioneer in the emerging feminist art in the US.
Although Nevelson is not usually labeled Pop artist, there are similarities that make it interesting to see her work in this context. Creating new works from found objects, so called assemblages, has links both backwards to surrealism and forwards to today’s installation art. It was also a method used in Neodada by Robert Rauschenberg. One can also discern the influence of Nevelson’s idiom in works by pop artists like Marisol and Joe Tilson.
Nevelson’s most appreciated works are monochromatic assemblages of wood she found on the streets of New York. Totem I is a work in this category and an illustrative example of Nevelson’s working method during the late 1950s.
Kristoffer Arvidsson/Per Dahlström/Anna Hyltze 2014
