As a master of contemplative, spiritual expression, Graves used natural forms to symbolize his state of mind and inner vision. The bird with folded wings seems to emerge from his transcendent imagination, the artist’s “inner eye,” rather than from direct observation. The transparent, abstract image suggests an engraving in the face of a rock, worn away by time and weather, at once fading and accumulating new meaning.
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2009
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2009
- Title
-
Folded Wings – Memory – & the Moon Weeping
- Artist
- Date
- ca. 1942-1943
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- sheet: 29 3⁄8 x 23 3⁄4 in. (74.6 x 60.3 cm)
- Credit Line
-
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of Michael and Caryl Marsh
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- ink wash and gouache on paper
- Classifications
- Keywords
-
- Animal – other – skeleton
- State of being – emotion – sorrow
- Animal – bird
- Allegory – other – memory
- Landscape – celestial – moon
- Object Number
-
1969.78
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI
