Catherine Walworth is the Jackye and Curtis Finch, Jr., Curator of Drawings at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the author of Soviet Salvage: Imperial Debris, Revolutionary Reuse, and Russian Constructivism.
Description
"Architects of Being sets two imposing artists against a vivid backdrop of New York City struggling under an economic depression, Robert Moses's wrecking ball, and the rise of American abstraction. In the midst of these and other more personal obstacles, Nevelson and Slobodkina built independent artistic lives of inspired audacity. In telling their stories, the book's authors take us on a romp through the mid-twentieth-century New York art scene, which both women navigated with fashionable flair. The exploration of Nevelson's largely black-and-white world benefits from the colorful parallel story of Slobodkina, while Slobodkina's 'anything goes' approach to transforming objects is viewed through the lens of Nevelson's assemblage practice. Over everything is the pervasive presence of architecture-art and artistic personas constructed, apartments refurbished, houses designed, and art studios that took over domestic spaces. In the era of McCarthyism and Leave It to Beaver conformism, Nevelson and Slobodkina led dazzlingly original lives."-Susan Fisher Sterling, Ph.D., Alice West Director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts