This intriguing object from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery is by artist Lizbeth Stewart.
Reptiles from the Renwick
This intriguing object from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery is by artist Lizbeth Stewart.
When encountering this piece, one wonders what is going on here. Even after carefully studying it, the viewer knows little more about the artwork than when it was first seen. True, one recognizes a monkey and a lizard. The disparity in scale between the two animals and their stopped-action gestures suggest intrusion into a scene from some demonic drama.
Source: Kenneth Trapp. The Renwick at Twenty-Five (online exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1997).
Pictured: Lizbeth Stewart, born 1948, Monkey and Lizard,1982, hand-built, soft slab-constructed, coiled, underglazed, glazed, and painted clay, 30 x 58 x 30 in., Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Gift of KPMG Peat Marwick.