Wave
Artist
Richard Tuttle
(American, born 1941)
Date1964-1965
MediumAcrylic on wood construction
DimensionsOverall: 26 × 20 × 2 1/4 inches (66.04 × 50.8 × 5.72 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation–Commerce Bank, Trustee
Object number2005.29
Signedverso: " 'Wave' 1964 or 5 R. Tuttle"
On View
On viewGallery Location
- L4
Collections
DescriptionThis painting is a shaped canvas. The work is vertically bisected into two equal components by a line that runs parallel to the configuration of the canvas. It is painted in a solid, uniform violet color.Exhibition HistoryWater, Harmony and Angst, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis,
MO, July 20, 2007-January 5, 2008, no cat.
"Simplicity and complexity are virtually the same thing." -Richard Tuttle
What simple shape comes to mind when you think of a wave? Does it look anything like this pair of gentle, nested curves by Richard Tuttle? Wave belongs to a series from the mid-1960s that Tuttle called "ideograms" or "pictographs." He referred to these works this way because they function as symbolic shorthand for real things that are, in fact, quite complicated, like the rhythmic, cresting swell of the ocean.
Private collection, 1988;
With Blum Helman Gallery, New York;
Purchased from the Blum Helman Gallery by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2005.
Jan Schall and Robert Storr, Sparks! The William T. Kemper Collecting Initiative (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008): 120, 121, (repro.).
Copyright© Richard Tuttle
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