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Night Journey

1969–70
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 915
Night Journey belongs to Bowling’s Map series, a group of mostly abstract paintings composed of broad fields of color into which the artist placed the continents of Australia, South America, and Africa. Here, the barely discernible shapes of South America, in red at center left, and Africa, in blue and pink at center right, hover in a luminous but moody composition, which he created primarily by pouring various layers of diluted paint onto his canvas while adeptly controlling the final staining effect. The yellow area evokes the Atlantic Ocean and, more significantly for Bowling, the Middle Passage, the forced sea journey endured by enslaved people taken from West Africa to the Americas and West Indies.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Night Journey
  • Artist: Frank Bowling (British, born Bartica, Guyana 1934)
  • Date: 1969–70
  • Medium: Acrylic on canvas
  • Dimensions: 83 7/8 × 72 in. (213 × 182.9 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Maddy and Larry Mohr, 2011
  • Object Number: 2011.590.2
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Looking West Again, Frank Bowling British, Acrylic, acrylic gel and found objects on cotton canvas with marouflage
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According to Keitur Falls
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Two Trees, Peter Doig British, Oil on canvas
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