At Pace, Louise Nevelson’s Collages Give Depth to Flatness

THE DAILY PIC: This Louise Nevelson collage is dated 1956 and is now on view at Pace Gallery in New York. Nevelson went on to be quite a star for much of the 1960s and 70s, then seemed to lose the art world’s attention. We got worn out, maybe, by the frequent repetition of her trademark black-on-black amassments of surplus wood. That’s why it’s so nice to see her working in a different, less recognizable mode in these collages. There’s something almost photographic in how she flattens out the world in them. Although it feels as though, instead of using a lens or even perspective to transfer three dimensions to two, she’s used a rolling pin – maybe one of the ones that ended up painted black in her assemblages. (© 2015 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo courtesy Pace Gallery)

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