Sky Cathedral

Nevelson’s wall sculptures have an architectural scale and dramatic impact that suited the artist’s grand personality. The artist liked black paint because it conjured ​“totality, peace and greatness.” Here, the light gently picks up the spectral outlines of the fragmented objects to create an elusive handwriting across the velvety black field. Sky Cathedral evokes what Nevelson called ​“the heavenly spheres, the places between the land and the sea” lying beyond our experience of ordinary things.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006