Artwork Details
- Title
- After Wood
- Artist
- Date
- 1990
- Location
- Dimensions
- overall: 34 x 23 1⁄2 x 22 7⁄8 in. (86.4 x 59.7 x 58.2 cm.) top: 13 3⁄8 x 25 x 22 7⁄8 in. (34.0 x 63.5 x 58.2 cm.) bottom: 30 3⁄8 x 23 5⁄8 x 11 3⁄8 in. (77.2 x 60.0 x 28.9 cm.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mrs. Jaquelin Hume
- Mediums Description
- painted steel
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Abstract — geometric
- Object Number
- 1990.46A-B
Artwork Description
Robert Hudson uses titles and visual illusions to create art that is puzzling and playful. The title After Wood suggests that Hudson was inspired by something he saw in the landscape of the West Coast, but it also draws our attention to the surfaces of the sculpture, which he shaped, scored, and then painted to look like organic material. He even fashioned the steel to look as if he had incorporated found objects into the work. The blocky feet that appear to be carved from wood are actually made of metal. The circles and arcs of the different components move in a complex web of directions, as if Hudson wanted to describe the workings of invisible forces. After Wood is a sculpture, a riddle, and a kinetic machine, all at once.
Videos
An interview with the artist Robert Hudson. Robert Hudson grew up in rural Washington State and moved to San Francisco to attend college. Hudson was influenced by the city's ceramic artists, whose brightly colored works combine traditional craft and sculpture. He has said that he loves to be "in a position of being overwhelmed," so he makes objects that blur the lines between sculpture, painting, and drawing. His trompe l'oeil, or "fool the eye," sculptures look like one material but are actually made of another, often confusing our perceptions of two- and three-dimensional objects (Beal, "Welded Irony: The Sculpture of Robert Hudson," in Robert Hudson, A Survey, 1985).