Moondog (3/3)

Last updated
Moondog
Moondog 3-3.jpg
Artist Tony Smith
Year1964 (1964)
Type Aluminum, painted black
Dimensions521.3 cm× 468.0 cm× 467.4 cm(17 ft 1+14 in× 15 ft 4+14 in× 15 ft 4 in)
Location National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Coordinates 38°53′27″N77°01′22″W / 38.89090700°N 77.02270600°W / 38.89090700; -77.02270600
OwnerNational Gallery of Art

Moondog is a minimalist sculpture created by Tony Smith in 1964. [1] The piece is composed of 15 octahedra and 10 tetrahedra, and while perfectly ordered and symmetrical when seen from certain angles, it carries a strong tilt forward when seen from other angles. This is the third of an edition of three in the series (with one artist's proof).

Contents

The title refers to Joan Miró's painting Dog Barking at the Moon and a blind poet and composer named Moondog. [2]

It was installed at the Museum of Modern Art. [3] In 1997, it showed at Paula Cooper Gallery. [2] The work currently resides in the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Gallery of Art</span> National art museum in Washington, D.C., United States

The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Judd</span> American artist (1928–1994)

Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism. In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy. He is generally considered the leading international exponent of "minimalism", and its most important theoretician through such writings as "Specific Objects" (1964). Judd voiced his unorthodox perception of minimalism in Arts Yearbook 8, where he says, "The new three dimensional work doesn't constitute a movement, school, or style. The common aspects are too general and too little common to define a movement. The differences are greater than the similarities."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kiki Smith</span> German-born American artist

Kiki Smith is a German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS, feminism, and gender, while recent works have depicted the human condition in relationship to nature. Smith lives and works in the Lower East Side, New York City, and the Hudson Valley, New York State.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Gober</span> American sculptor

Robert Gober is an American sculptor. His work is often related to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors, and legs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tony Smith (sculptor)</span> American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer

Anthony Peter Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.

Kelley Walker is an American post-conceptual artist who lives and works in New York City. He uses advertising and digital media to make "paintings" using screen printing and/or digital printing technologies. His art appropriates iconic cultural images, altering them to highlight underlying issues of American politics and consumerism. He produces work collaboratively with artist Wade Guyton under the name Guyton\Walker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Durant</span> American multimedia artist

Sam Durant is a multimedia artist whose works engage social, political, and cultural issues. Often referencing American history, his work explores culture and politics, engaging subjects such as the civil rights movement, southern rock music, and modernism.

The Park Place Gallery was a contemporary cooperative art gallery, in operation from 1963 to 1967, and was located in New York City. The Park Place Gallery was a notable as a post-World War II gallery for both its location and that it supported a group of artists working with geometric abstraction and space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Czech Cubism</span> Avant-garde art movement in Czech Republic

Czech Cubism was an avant-garde art movement of Czech proponents of Cubism, active mostly in Prague from 1912 to 1914. Prague was perhaps the most important center for Cubism outside Paris before the start of World War I.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden</span> Sculpture garden in Washington, D.C.

The National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden is the most recent addition to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in the United States. It is located in the National Mall between the National Gallery's West Building and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

The Paula Cooper Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, founded in 1968 by Paula Cooper.

<i>Throwback</i> (3/3)

Throwback is a public artwork by American artist Tony Smith, located at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., United States. This version is the third of an edition of three in the series with one artist's proof.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern sculpture</span> Era of sculpture beginning with Auguste Rodin

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".

Moses is a series of three different painted steel statues of geometric shapes, created by Tony Smith.

<i>Throwback</i> (1/3) Sculpture by Tony Smith

Throwback (1/3) is a public artwork by American artist Tony Smith, located in the Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMC) Plaza at 1166 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York.

<i>Playground</i> (3/3)

Playground is a public artwork by American artist Tony Smith, located at Beverly Gardens Park in Beverly Hills, California. It is a welded steel sculpture surfaced with black paint. The sculpture was conceived in 1962 and cast in 2003. Situated on the edge of Beverly Gardens Park and visible from the street, this sculpture is mounted on an approximately 4” tall concrete platform. It measures 5’ 4” height x 10’ 8” width x 5’ 4” depth.

Charles Gaines is an American artist whose work interrogates the discourse of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently involves the use of systems, predominantly in the form of the grid, often in combination with photography. His work is rooted in Conceptual Art – in dialogue with artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner – and Gaines is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. As one of the only African-American conceptual artists working in the 1970s, a time when political expressionism was a prevailing concern among African-American artists, Gaines was an outlier in his pursuit of abstraction and non-didactic approach to race and politics. There is a strong musical thread running through much of Gaines' work, evident in his repeated use of musical scores as well in his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy, as similar to John Cage and Sol LeWitt.

Meg Webster is an American artist from San Francisco working primarily in sculpture and installation art. While her works span multiple media, she is most well known for her artworks that feature natural elements. She is closely affiliated with Post-Minimalism and the Land Art movement and has been exhibiting her work since 1980.

<i>Wandering Rocks</i> (sculpture) Sculpture by Tony Smith

Wandering Rocks is a 1967 steel sculpture by Tony Smith, made in an edition of five plus one artist's proof. The Minimalist work comprises five different polyhedral elements painted black.

Robert Strawbridge Grosvenor is an American contemporary sculptor, installation artist, and draftsman. He is known for his monumental room installations, which border between sculpture and architecture. Grosvenor is associated with minimalism.

References

  1. "Moondog, (sculpture)". SIRIS
  2. 1 2 "Paula Cooper Gallery". Archived from the original on 16 December 2014.
  3. "Re-Approaching Tony Smith". Archived from the original on 14 May 2017.
  4. "National Gallery of Art - Sculpture Garden". www.nga.gov. Archived from the original on 2006-09-11.