"...What it might mean to live with these reliefs—a possibility of being with them in an enigmatic but finally not hostile way...It is as if the sculptures on this wall—and by extension all the sculptures—were asking us to join them in some new mode of being together. For the set of relations doesn't only come alive between the sculptures and the object world: it subsists in the world of human habitation too. The reliefs never stop involving us in their space by reaching out to ours."
R esiding in the same permanent collection for over 40 years and embodying Lee Bontecou's fierce individual vision, Untitled from 1959-60 is a superb example of the artist’s signature canvas-and-wire constructions which defy categorization and fascinate the senses. The power of Lee Bontecou lies in her incomparable eye and vision as an artist: one who embraced, in her own words, "all freedom in every sense." Untitled perhaps best exemplifies this sentiment, manipulating inherently rigid materials to form a sinuous, enveloping void which simultaneously expresses the organic and mechanical. Bontecou was energized by Abstract Expressionist painters, particularly drawn to the looseness and freedom of their work which she channeled into the construction of her sculptures. As such, Bontecou became a pioneer of the New York art scene and the only woman in Leo Castelli's notable stable of artists. At once futuristic and fossil-like, graphic and rich, weighty and weightless, Untitled is a stunning response to the unknown, the wondrous, and sublime.
“The power of Bontecou's reliefs is remarkably single. The three primary aspects, the scale, the structure and the image, are simple, definite and powerful.”
Bontecou’s oeuvre stands out as extraordinary by way of its quality, scope, and art historical significance—a sublime interrogation of boundary-defying craft and form in the history of art. Untitled illustrates Bontecou’s best-known skills at intimate proportions: the artist’s welded framework evokes the lightness of boxes and, in stretching over planes of canvas, she imparts a painterly sense of contrasting depth and illusion. Beginning in 1959, the same year as the present work, Bontecou's sculptures revealed a repeated large circular opening motif, projecting from the surface of the work itself and framing a dark, receding inset. She intended these blackened voids to evoke mystery and a range of emotive responses to the unknown and the extraordinary, prompted in part by her fascination with scientific and technological advances surrounding the exploration of outer space. At the same time, this aspect of her work refers to the underbelly of human nature, encompassing fear, violence, brutality, and war. In a statement accompanying the Museum of Modern Art’s 1963 exhibition Americans, Bontecou said that her goal was to “build things that express our relation to this country—to other countries—to this world—to other worlds—in terms of myself. To glimpse some of the fear, hope, ugliness, beauty, and mystery that exists in all of us and which hangs over all the young people today.”
Bontecou’s ability to condense the dreams, anxieties, and fears of her time into sculptural form made her one of the most important and radical working artists in New York in the 1960s. While never explicitly referencing current events, Untitled reflects the tension and unease of 1959-60, marked by turmoils that included the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War. Further, her fascination with space fueled her void-centric renderings, which mimicked the deep black vastness of the cosmos. Beyond their topical awareness, Bontecou’s sculptures are masterfully executed with mechanical influence. The technical handling of Bontecou’s chosen materials stem from her early exposure to the process of industrial manufacturing—both her parents were skilled technicians: her mother a worker in a World War II submarine factory wiring transmitters, and her father the inventor of an all-aluminum canoe. Conveyor belts discarded by the laundry beneath her apartment, bits of canvas, and pieces of wire and machinery left on the streets were twisted and stretched into three-dimensional wall hangings. The resulting fabrications were characterized above all for their ingenious and unsettling use of space—gaping black cavities that excited both fear and fantasy, armatures which present complex feats of engineering.
“Since my early years, the natural world and its visual wonders and horrors—man-made devices with their mind-boggling engineering feats and destructive abominations, elusive human nature and its multiple ramifications from the sublime to unbelievable abhorrences—to me are all one.”
Richard and Kathy Feld amassed a fascinating collection of sculpture by artists such as Betty Parsons, Alexander Calder, Lee Bontecou, Mark di Suvero, Dorothy Dehner, and Louise Nevelson. Beginning in the 1970s, the Felds became avid collectors, particularly of sculpture, taking their three children into New York City nearly every weekend to visit galleries. Most notable was the Felds' profound care for each of the artists in their collection, often forming deep friendships and connections with many of the artists they collected. In particular, the Felds were staunch supporters and friends of Lee Bontecou. They passionately attended her gallery exhibitions, encouraged her creative pursuits, and acquired works directly from her studio, believing firmly in her unique artistic vision. After Bontecou moved to Pennsylvania, Richard and Kathy traveled to visit Lee and her husband, enjoying the pastoral scenery and sharing a cherished friendship and many fond memories. Later, Bontecou gifted the Felds one of her works and often sent letters and postcards from her travels, checking in on the couple frequently. The Felds' passion for sculpture, particularly that of female sculptors, combined with their deep care and understanding for the art and artists they collected, was ahead of its time and a testament to the couple as true collectors.
The importance of Bontecou’s early canvas-and-wire constructions cannot be overstated. Bontecou was profoundly influential for numerous other female artists, including Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois, while critics and artists alike immediately grasped the impact and magnitude of her developments as she married the Cubist brushstroke to sculptural form. Dore Ashton said of the artist in a 1963 essay: "In this image-making prowess there is an originality that would be difficult to define in the logic of language, an originality in the quite literal sense: one is absorbed by the reigning image and knows instinctively that it had its origin deep in the artist's psyche... The reigning image is the black tunneled hole central to anything Bontecou undertakes... the intensity of her expression and the currents of authenticity that one feels so strongly lead one to sense for a moment the depth and inexpressible sources of her imagery" (Exh. Cat., Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective, 2004, p. 174).
"I like space that never stops. Black is like that. Holes and boxes mean secrets and shelter."
Untitled commands respect and brutal honesty, drawing in viewers with its complex textures and overstretched curves. It is a mystical creation of our own world, a balance of man and machine. Though Bontecou’s work of the early 1960s stands at a historical crossroads—the Surrealists she so admired behind, her output alongside the Assemblage artists and inspiration to feminists, her seeming anticipation of Minimalism—it is unequivocally her own. Untitled is a true embrace of the otherworldly, a celebration of exceptional form.
