Nancy Graves (December 23, 1939 – October 21, 1995, in Massachusetts) was an American
sculptor
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...
,
painter
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...
,
printmaker, and sometime-
filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like
camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in many public collections, including those of the
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of ch ...
(
Washington, D.C.), the
Brooklyn Museum of Art, the
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds ...
, the
National Gallery of Australia (
Canberra), the
Des Moines Art Center,
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
(
Minneapolis
Minneapolis () is the largest city in Minnesota, United States, and the county seat of Hennepin County. The city is abundant in water, with list of lakes in Minneapolis, thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks and waterfalls. ...
), and the
Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, FL). When Graves was just 29, she was given a solo exhibition at the
Whitney Museum of American Art. At the time she was the youngest artist, and fifth woman to achieve this honor.
Early life and studies
Graves was born in
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all ...
. Her interest in art, nature, and
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
was fostered by her father, an accountant at the
Berkshire Museum. After graduating from
Vassar College in English Literature, Graves attended
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees. Fellow Yale Art and Architecture alumni of the 1960s include the painters, photographers, and sculptors
Brice Marden,
Richard Serra,
Chuck Close,
Janet Fish, Gary Hudson,
Rackstraw Downes, and
Sylvia and
Robert Mangold.
[ Ken Johnson (March 11, 2005)]
Art in Review; Nancy Graves
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''.
After her graduation in 1964, she received a
Fulbright Scholarship and studied painting in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...
. Continuing her international travels, she then moved on to
Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
. During the rest of her life, she would also travel to Morocco, Germany, Canada, India, Nepal, Kashmir, Egypt, Peru, China, Australia.
[Cathleen McGuigan (December 6, 1987)]
Forms of Fantasy
''New York Times''. She was married to Richard Serra from 1965 to 1970.
Work
A prolific artist who worked in painting, sculpture, printmaking and film, Graves first made her presence felt on the New York art scene in the late 1960s and 70's, with life-size sculptures of camels that seemed as accurate as a natural history display. Like-minded artists included
Eva Hesse, Close,
Bruce Nauman,
Keith Sonnier, and Serra, to whom Graves was married from 1965 to 1970.
[ Roberta Smith (October 24, 1995)]
Nancy Graves, 54, Prolific Post-Minimalist Artist
''New York Times''. Her work has strong ties to the
Alexander Calder's stabiles and to the sculptures of
David Smith, with their welded parts and found objects; she collected works by both artists.
Her most famous sculpture, ''Camels'', was first displayed in the
Whitney Museum of American Art. The sculpture features three separate camels, each made of many materials, among them burlap, wax, fiberglass, and animal skin. Each camel is also painted with acrylics and oil colors to appear realistic. The camels are now stored in the
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the ...
, and two later "siblings" reside in the
Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in
Aachen, Germany. Working in
Fiberglas,
latex
Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well.
In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosper ...
, marble dust and other unorthodox materials, Graves later moved on to camel skeletons and bones, which she dispersed about the floor or hung from ceilings.
In ''Variability of Similar Forms'' (1970), from drawings that Graves made of Pleistocene camel skeletons, she sculpted 36 individual leg bones in various positions, each nearly the height of a man, and arranged them upright in an irregular pattern on a wooden base.
In the early 1970s, she made five films. Two of them, ''Goulimine, 1970'' and ''Izy Boukir,'' recorded the movement of camels in Morocco, reflecting the influence of
Eadweard Muybridge's motion-study photography.
In 1976, German art collector Peter Ludwig commissioned a wax variation of a 1969 sculpture of camel bones.
Graves began showing open-form polychrome sculptures in 1980, one prime example being ''Trace,'' a very large tree whose trunk was made from ribbons of bronze with foliage of steel mesh. Also in the early 1980s, she began to produce the works for which she became most widely known: the colorfully painted, playfully disjunctive assemblages of found objects cast in bronze, including plants, mechanical parts, tools, architectural elements, food products and much more.
Graves also created a distinctive body of
aerial landscapes, mostly based on maps of the Moon and similar sources. Below is a link to an example (''VI Maskeyne Da Region of the Moon''). Author Margret Dreikausen (1985) writes extensively of Graves's aerial works as part of a broader discussion of the
aerial view and its importance in modern and contemporary art.
Graves also began using the lost wax technique in her later work. She would cast delicate objects in bronze. Then use them to create arrangements. Her color scheme changed over time to bright colors in the 1980s and then shifted to more "subtle" colors in the 1990s.
Some of Graves's other works include:
*''Goulimine'' (film, 1970)
*''Izy Boukir'' (film, 1971)
*''VI Maskeyne Da Region of the Moon'' (lithograph, 1972)
*''Fragment'' (painting, 1977)
*''Wheelabout'' (sculpture, 1985)
*''Hindsight'' (sculpture, 1986)
*''Immovable Iconography'' (sculpture, 1990)
*''Footscray'' (oil on canvas, paint, and sculpture)
*''Metaphore & Melanomy'', (cast bronze, 1995)
[Walla Walla Foundry](_blank)
Nancy Graves.
*''Camels, VI, VII, VIII'' (wood, steel, burlap, polyurethane, wax, oil paint, 1969)
*''Fossils'' (Plaster, dust, marble dust, acrylic and steel, 1970)
*''Calipers'' (Hot-rolled steel, 1970)
*''Shaman'' (Latex on muslin, wax, steel, copper, aluminum wire, gauze, oil paint, marble dust, and acrylic, 1970)
*''Variability and Repetition of Similar Forms II'' (Bronze and COR-TEN steel, 1979)
*''Trambulate'' (Bronze and carbon steel with polyurethane paint and baked enamel, 1984)
At the end of her life, Graves was incorporating handblown glass into her sculptures and experimenting with poly-optics, a glasslike material that can be cast.
Graves worked and lived in
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develo ...
and in
Beacon, New York, where she maintained a studio.
Exhibitions
Graves, whose first New York exhibition was at the Graham Gallery in 1968, has been represented by
M. Knoedler & Company since 1980. She exhibited extensively in galleries in the United States and Europe and is represented in museums around the world. A comprehensive museum retrospective, organized by the
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, later traveled to the
Brooklyn Museum in 1987.
When the restored
Rainbow Room reopened in Manhattan's
Rockefeller Center in 1987, a Graves sculpture was installed at the entrance.
A solo exhibition, "Nancy Graves: Mapping" was held at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in 2019. Mitchell-Innes & Nash has represented the Estate of Nancy Graves since 2014. The exhibition was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by
Robert Storr.
Awards
* Skowhegan Medal for Drawing/Graphics (1980)
* New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award (1986)
* Honorary Degree, Skidmore College (1989)
* Elected into the
National Academy of Design (1992)
In others' art
Mary Beth Edelson's
''Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper'' (1972) appropriated
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially re ...
’s ''The Last Supper'', with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles.
John the Baptist
John the Baptist or , , or , ;Wetterau, Bruce. ''World history''. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1994. syc, ܝܘܿܚܲܢܵܢ ܡܲܥܡܕ݂ܵܢܵܐ, Yoḥanān Maʿmḏānā; he, יוחנן המטביל, Yohanān HaMatbil; la, Ioannes Bapti ...
's head was replaced with Nancy Graves, and Christ's with
Georgia O'Keeffe. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the
feminist art movement."
Death
Nancy Graves made her last works in April 1995 at the Walla Walla Foundry with Saff Tech Arts in
Washington state.
In May, less than a month later, she was diagnosed with
ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is a cancerous tumor of an ovary. It may originate from the ovary itself or more commonly from communicating nearby structures such as fallopian tubes or the inner lining of the abdomen. The ovary is made up of three different ...
and died the following October, aged 55.
See also
*
Aerial landscape
References
Further reading
* Dreikausen, Margret
"Aerial Perception: The Earth as Seen from Aircraft and Spacecraft and Its Influence on Contemporary Art"(Associated University Presses:
Cranbury, New Jersey;
London, England
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...
;
Mississauga, Ontario: 1985) .
* Graves, Nancy Stevenson; E A Carmean;
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
''The Sculpture of Nancy Graves: a catalogue raisonné with essays''(
New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Fort Worth Art Museum: Distributed in the United States … by Rizzoli International, ©1987) ; .
External links
Nancy Graves profileNational Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of ch ...
Nancy Graves in the National Gallery of Australia's Kenneth Tyler collectionArchives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute: Oral History Interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Graves, Nancy
1939 births
1995 deaths
20th-century American painters
Sculptors from Massachusetts
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
Deaths from ovarian cancer
People from Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Yale School of Art alumni
Art Students League of New York people
Vassar College alumni
20th-century American sculptors
20th-century American women artists
American women printmakers
20th-century American printmakers
Sculptors from New York (state)
Postminimalist artists
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Fulbright alumni