Existing comment:
Barnett Newman
born New York City 1905–died New York City 1970
Lace Curtain for Mayor Daley
1968
Cor-ten steel, galvanized barbed wire, and enamel paint
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Annalee Newman, 1989.433
A menacing perversion of the modernist grid, Lace Curtain for Mayor Daley boldly departs from Newman's monumental color field paintings. He produced the sculpture for a protest exhibition organized after the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when Mayor Richard J. Daley had authorized the police to use extraordinary force against antiwar protesters. The sculpture's barbed wire form echoes that of barriers that were attached to army jeeps in Chicago for crowd control. Although Newman, then in his sixties, rarely made artworks referencing current events, this one openly aligns with his self-description as an "artist-citizen." |