Crescent

Artist William Baziotes (American, 1912 - 1963)

Date1959

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 60 1/4 × 72 3/8 inches (153.04 × 183.83 cm)
Framed: 60 5/8 × 72 9/16 × 1 1/2 inches (153.99 × 184.31 × 3.81 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through the exchange of a gift of the Friends of Art

Object number90-10

Signedl.r.: "Baziotes"

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

Modern Art

Terms

DescriptionThe image, although abstract, suggests two figures floating before a background made up of two distinct areas: the lower third of the canvas may be interpreted as a body of water or land mass of mottled browns and grays; the remaining upper portion of the canvas is taken up by a mottled area of predominantly yellow with some green and blue. Located near the center of the canvas, floating before these two fields of mottled color, is a blue/gray form suggesting a crescent moon. Centered between the left edge of the canvas and the crescent moon is a dark-grey form suggesting a seahorse. Above, a meandering white line extends across the upper top edge branching off into three segments at the left edge of the canvas.Gallery Label

Gallery Label

The French symbolist poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire often inspired William Baziotes' painting. In The Favors of the Moon, one of Baziotes' favorite poems, Baudelaire wrote, "You shall love what I love and that by which I am loved: water and clouds, night and silence, the vast green seas." A comparable mystery can be felt in Baziotes' painting. Here, the crescent moon confronts a seahorse-like creature floating in a mottled, vaporous realm of sea or sky. The two forms appear to be suspended in a silent act of mutual reverence. The delicate line meandering at the top of the canvas may suggest a passage of the soul, the graceful movements of the moon and its companion or the lyrical cadence of Baudelaire's poem.

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