Buchanan created Wall Column in Macon, Georgia, where she added a few pinches of Georgia clay to concrete, and painted the resulting forms in a light patina of burnt sienna. Born and raised in North Carolina, Buchanan became interested in the notion of ruins both urban and rural in 1977. She began to construct cast-concrete blocks, or what she called "frustules," that emulated the rough erosion of weathered buildings. "Frustum" is a geometric term for the base of a cone whose tip has been cut off. The title Wall Column implies that the blocks were originally unified but then transformed into new forms out of a process of demolition.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Wall Column
Artist:Beverly Buchanan (American, Fuquay, North Carolina 1940–2015 Ann Arbor, Michigan)
Date:1980
Medium:Concrete and paint
Dimensions:1981.8a: 9 1/2 × 7 1/2 × 8 in., 39.2 lb. (24.1 × 19.1 × 20.3 cm, 17.8 kg) 1981.8b: 10 1/2 × 8 × 7 1/2 in., 45.2 lb. (26.7 × 20.3 × 19.1 cm, 20.5 kg) 1981.8c: 9 3/4 × 7 7/8 × 10 in., 44.9 lb. (24.8 × 20 × 25.4 cm, 20.4 kg) 1981.8d: 2 × 9 1/2 × 6 3/8 in., 6.8 lb. (5.1 × 24.1 × 16.2 cm, 3.1 kg)
Classification:Sculpture
Credit Line:Purchase, Mrs. Wilson Nolen Gift, 1981
Object Number:1981.8a-d
Rights and Reproduction:Jane D. Bridges
Inscription: Inscribed (top of component a & bottom of d): B
[Kornblee Gallery, New York, until 1981; sold to MMA]
New York. A.I.R. Gallery. "Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States," September 2–20, 1980, unnumbered cat.
Brooklyn Museum. "Beverly Buchanan: Ruins and Rituals," October 21, 2016–March 5, 2017, no catalogue.
New York. Brooklyn Museum. "We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85," April 21–September 17, 2017, no. 118.
California African American Museum, Los Angeles. "We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85," October 13, 2017–January 14, 2018, no. 118.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. "We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85," February 17–May 27, 2018, no. 118.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. "We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85," June 26–September 30, 2018, no. 118.
Houston. Menil Drawing Institute. "Dream Monuments: Drawing in the 1960s and 1970s," May 21–September 19, 2021, no catalogue.
New York. David Zwirner Gallery. "Toni Morrison's Black Book," January 20—February 26, 2022, no catalogue.
Beverly Buchanan inDialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States. Exh. cat., A.I.R. Gallery. New York, 1980, unpaginated, ill.
Park McArthur and Jennifer Burris Staton. Beverly Buchanan, 1978–1981. Ed. Park McArthur and Jennifer Burris Staton. Mexico City, 2014, pp. 15, 87, 92, ill. p. 25.
Stephen Maine. "The Political Abstractions of Beverly Buchanan." hyperallergic.com (October 29, 2016), ill. (color, installation view Exh Brooklyn 2016–17).
Karen Rosenberg. "The Architecture of Survival." New York Times (November 11, 2016), ill. p. C30 (installation photo, Exh Brooklyn 2016–17).
Aruna D'Souza inWe Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, New Perspectives. Ed. Catherine Morris and Rujeko Hockley. Exh. cat., Brooklyn Museum. New York, 2018, pp. 88, 135, no. 118, ill. p. 34 (color installation image), fig. 43 (color).
Kris Timken. Women, Land Art and the Social (1978–83). PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz. 2020, pp. 200–1, 207, fig. 13, erroneously locates it in the collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York in figure caption.
Amelia Groom. Beverly Buchanan. London, 2021, p. 25, fig. 20.
Sadia Shirazi. Fugitive Abstraction: Zarina, Mohamedi, and Lala Rukh. PhD diss., Cornell University. 2021, pp. 112–13, fig. 16.
Molly Superfine. Ruins and Remains: Performative Sculpture and the Politics of Touch in the 1970s. PhD diss., Columbia University. 2023, pp. 153–55, fig. 3.6.
Siddhartha Mitter. "Masterpiece Vanishing Into the Marsh." New York Times (July 30, 2023), p. AR10.
Alexander Calder (American, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1898–1976 New York)
ca. 1928
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