Study for Seraphim: Love
Dorothea Rockburne American
Not on view
The precisely folded forms shaped out of slick vellum reflect Rockburne’s longstanding interest in Reimannian geometry, harmonic intervals, and topographical theory, which she first encountered while a student at Black Mountain College in the early 1950s. Rockburne wrote, "paper has two sides, it has a front and a back, and it has depth," a physical presence she enhanced through overlapping forms and gestural brushstrokes of paint. Yet this work is also ethereal and transcendent, as it is part of a series inspired by the fifteenth-century Italian artist Fra Angelico. The origami-like folds evoke the abstract wings and robes of his painted angels while emphasizing the incorporeal and otherworldly status of the seraphim, as complex and multifaceted as love.
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