Chapel of the Good Shepherd | |
---|---|
Nevelson Chapel | |
Artist | Louise Nevelson |
Completion date | 1977 |
Movement | Abstract sculpture |
Dimensions | 21 by 28 feet |
Location | New York |
40°45′31″N73°58′14″W / 40.7587193°N 73.970495°W |
Chapel of the Good Shepherd (also known as Nevelson Chapel) is a sculptural environment installation by the American 20th-century artist Louise Nevelson located at the St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York City. [1] The chapel, commissioned in 1975 and dedicated in 1977, was donated by Erol Beker. Nevelson designed the five-sided sanctuary space by incorporating various abstract sculptural elements such as reliefs, columns, and an altarpiece made with materials that included found objects from New York City streets.
Nevelson intended to design a spiritual environment that would allow the viewers to "have a moment of peace". [2] While the chapel is a Christian sanctuary space, Nevelson believed that its abstract nature transcended religious denominational boundaries. The installation has been compared to other 20th-century spiritual spaces designed by prominent artists, including Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence by Henri Matisse, emphasizing the transformative potential of modern architecture.
The Nevelson Chapel underwent renovations in the 1980s and 2018-2019, with a $5.75 million restoration by Kostow Greenwood Architects. The church and the chapel are part of the Citigroup Center at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street in Midtown Manhattan. [3]
Originally commissioned in 1975, the chapel was donated by parishioner Erol Beker [4] and dedicated on December 13, 1977. [5] Louise Nevelson, an American sculptor, gained prominence for her abstract and dark monochromatic three-dimensional installations usually made with wood or metal. [6] The resulting space was a five-sided sanctuary space featuring 24 seats, measuring 28 by 21 feet (8.5 by 6.4 m) and is adorned with a variety of abstract sculptural elements. [2] These included reliefs and columns made of wood and painted in white, with an altarpiece made of "gold leaf over a Masonite panel" placed in the middle. [2]
Much of the material used in the work consisted of found objects and wood pieces from New York City streets. [7] During the chapel's construction, Nevelson said: “If people can have a moment of peace and carry it with them in their memory banks, then that will be a great success for me”. [8] When she was asked about her role in creating a Christian sanctuary space as a Jewish artist, Nevelson responded that the abstract quality of her work "transcended" traditional denominational barriers. [9]
Nevelson's work has been praised for creating a meditative place in the middle of a busy urban environment. According to researcher Caitlin Turski Watson, the chapel "operates as a counter-hegemonic form of privately owned public space—the sacred public space". [10] Art historian Marchita Mauck described the Nevelson Chapel as a "healing place" where the "stark simplicity" of its environment "conveys strength, presence, [and] peace". [11]
Others have argued that the artist's ability to combine the artist's "characteristic abstraction" with "evocative Christian iconography" results in "symbolic archetypes" that could attract an audience of different faiths. [12] Nevelson's work has also been compared to other 20th-century chapels designed by modern artists, most notably the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence by the French 20th-century artist Henri Matisse and built between 1947 and 1951, in illustrating how "modern architectural forms can engage people in transformative experiences". [13] The Nevelson Chapel underwent a renovation in the 1980s and was later restored again between 2018 and 2019 by Kostow Greenwood Architects as part of a US$ 5.75 million project. [7]
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sculpture:
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic of the traditional arts, toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production is often called contemporary art or postmodern art.
Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire, she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century. Nevelson learned English at school, as she spoke Yiddish at home.
Notre-Dame du Haut is a Roman Catholic chapel in Ronchamp, France. Built in 1955, it is one of the finest examples of the architecture of Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier. The chapel is a working religious building and is under the guardianship of the private foundation Association de l’Œuvre de Notre-Dame du Haut. It attracts 80,000 visitors each year. In 2016, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in along with sixteen other works by Le Corbusier, because of its importance to the development of modernist architecture.
Assemblage is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the substrate. It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium. It is part of the visual arts and it typically uses found objects, but is not limited to these materials.
Art fabrication describes the process or service of producing large or technically difficult artworks through entities and resources beyond an individual artist's studio. When artists or designers are incapable or choose not to realize their designs or conceptions, they may enlist the assistance of an art fabrication company. Typically, an art fabrication company has access to the resources, specialized machinery and technologies, and labor necessary to execute particularly complex projects. According to a 2018 New York Times article, art fabricators have taken on a greater importance in recent years, as art schools have emphasized ideas and concepts over execution and contemporary artists become less present in their own work.
David Ascalon is an Israeli contemporary sculptor and stained glass artist, and co-founder of Ascalon Studios.
The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent collection galleries, storage, administrative offices, classrooms, a print study room, an auditorium, shop, and cafe. The Blanton's permanent collection consists of more than 21,000 works, with significant holdings of modern and contemporary art, Latin American art, Old Master paintings, and prints and drawings from Europe, the United States, and Latin America.
The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, often referred to as the Matisse Chapel or the Vence Chapel, is a small Catholic chapel located in the town of Vence on the French Riviera. It was dedicated to the Dominican Order. The church was built and decorated between 1947 and 1951 under a plan devised by artist Henri Matisse.
The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple name changes as well as moving its galleries and support spaces over 13 times. Its current home was built in 2006 in the South Boston Seaport District and designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Environmental sculpture is sculpture that creates or alters the environment for the viewer, as opposed to presenting itself figurally or monumentally before the viewer. A frequent trait of larger environmental sculptures is that one can actually enter or pass through the sculpture and be partially or completely surrounded by it. Also, in the same spirit, it may be designed to generate shadows or reflections, or to color the light in the surrounding area.
Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its administration of the permanent art collection distributed throughout the university campus, faculty offices, and student housing.
Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void". Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".
Albert Vrana (1921–1994) was an American sculptor who is best known for his mid-twentieth century monumental architectural sculptures done in the Modernist style, using novel materials, such as ferrocement, and new techniques, such as sand casting using plastic Styrofoam molds to shape sculptural concrete panels and metal sculptures.
The Sister Chapel (1974–1978) is a visual arts installation, conceived by Ilise Greenstein and created as a collaboration by thirteen women artists during the feminist art movement. Before its completion, the critic and curator Lawrence Alloway recognized its potential to be "a notable contribution to the long-awaited legible iconography of women in political terms." The Sister Chapel is on permanent display at the Center for Art and Social Engagement, an initiative of the Rowan University Art Gallery in Glassboro, New Jersey.
Kostow Greenwood Architects LLP, is a New York City-based architecture firm, specializing in broadcast and live arts facilities, interior architecture and historic preservation and renovation and urban revitalization projects. Serving commercial, nonprofit and institutional clients, the firm was founded in 1987, and is led by principals Michael Kostow and Jane Greenwood. Kostow Greenwood is a Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise.
Tobi Kahn is an American painter and sculptor. Kahn lives and works in New York City and is on the faculty at the School of Visual Arts.
Occupant is a play by Edward Albee, published in 2001.
Transparent Horizon is a 1975 black Cor-ten steel sculpture by Louise Nevelson, installed on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The artwork was among the first funded by MIT's "Percent-For-Art" program, which allocates $500,000 for art commissions for new architectural renovations on campus. The sculpture is an amalgam of two of Nevelson's previous works, Tropical Tree IV and Black Flower Series IV. The sculpture has been the target of vandalism.
Louise Nevelson Plaza, is a public art installation and park in Lower Manhattan which includes an arrangement of large abstract sculptures designed by the American 20th-century female artist Louise Nevelson. Described as an "outdoor environment", the triangle-shaped plaza is bounded by Maiden Lane, Liberty Street and William Street, adjacent to the building of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.