Dream House V

Born Leah Berliawsky, Nevelson immigrated to Maine at age four; she studied at the Art Students League of New York and with Hans Hofmann. She assisted Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and taught for the Federal Art Project/Works Project Administration, all before her first solo exhibition in 1940. Her work was presented in the 1962 Venice Biennale. In 1967, the Whitney Museum of American Art staged her first retrospective. Among the variations of Nevelson’s intricate monochrome assemblages—undertaken in black, white, or gold—black was most significant, as it “symbolized harmony and continuity” for the artist. In this piece, Nevelson assembles wooden volumes—cubes and cylinders—into a columnar structure to evoke at once the hand-tooled and the machine-made, the found and the built. What is inside, and what is outside of this dream house?