While visiting the UMMA recently (University of Michigan Museum of Art), I stumbled upon this large wooden wall sculpture on one of the upper level floors that featured modern art (20th century). I immediately was drawn to the many shapes that look a lot like dunnage separators and even dunnage trays or specialized kit-boxes. Take a look and see if you agree with my opinion!
The artist who created this piece was Louise Nevelson (9/23/1899 – 4/17/1988), an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Because she lacked the funds to purchase traditional artmaking materials, she usually used pieces of found wood, accumulated from the streets of New York City. She was actually born in Kyiv, Ukraine and immigrated to the United States. She is an artist that I have admired since seeing her art at other museums in Chicago or New York back in the early 1990s. I didn’t know that the UMMA had one of her works. She made this sculpture in 1971.
The name of this piece is Dark Presence III. The description card at the museum states that the piece “looms large in the viewer’s physical and emotional space. The impressive form reads as a seamless arrangement of puzzle pieces in which the identity of the objects is obscured by the black paint that blankets them, encouraging viewers to immerse themselves in abstract visual patterns.”