One Woman's World

In a misty, mystic haze of blue light stands a forest of eerie, black wooden shapes. They are made of orange crates, piano ornaments, driftwood, barrel tops and shipwreck planks, glued, twisted, nailed or pushed together. This is The Moon Garden + One, one of the most unusual exhibitions of sculpture in many a moon, on view this week at Manhattan's Grand Central Moderns Gallery.

Often there in her shadowy world is the woman who created it, Sculptress Louise Nevelson, 57. Wrapped in a heavy black wool coat, she waves a nervous hand at the shapes and explains: "This is the universe, the stars, the moon--and you and I, everyone." (The one in the show's title refers to the viewer.) Pointing to a wall of narrow and squat open boxes rhythmically jammed with wood bits of all shapes, she says: "This is Cathedral in the Sky, man's temple to man. And over there is the Moon Dial, the clocking of man's eternal search for the serene. Behind it, the Heavenly Gate, and above it, the Cross. But I'm not talking about Christianity. I speak of total being."

Louise Nevelson began to create her own kind of world in wood while she was still a child. Born on the black earth of the Ukrainian steppes, she came to the U.S. with her parents when she was four, settled with them in Rockland, Me., where the interlocking arms of heavy timber and the gentle twigs of rocky bush excited her imagination. While her family made a good living out of lumber, her young hands made bits of her imaginary universe out of driftwood and scraps. She moved into New York at 18, studied under Kenneth Hayes Miller at the Art Students League, then went to Germany, where she worked (in 1931) with Painter Hans Hofmann. In 1940 Karl Nierendorf (who championed Paul Klee in the U.S.) discovered her, staged her first one-woman show at his gallery.

Today Sculptress Nevelson lives in a three-story house in Manhattan's East 30s, her works scattered among tons of boards, planks, branches and sawdust. She finds her own driftwood along the Maine coast, does most of the work herself, only occasionally hiring a carpenter. When her house began to feel crowded not long ago, she put all her furniture out onto the sidewalk, keeping only a couch, a table and three chairs. "I needed the room," she says, "because I plan my shows as an ensemble, as one work. Everything has to fit together, to flow without effort, and I too must fit."

The Nevelson shows are always built around a single theme--last year it was The Forest, the year before Royal Voyage, this year Moon. "I never know my next move," she says, "I just let it happen. When I let my inner vision guide my hands, there are no errors." Said Paris Abstractionist Pierre Soulages of her current show: "It is not only sculpture, it is a whole world." And certainly Louise Nevelson's world is in no way trite or ordinary.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.