Modern Art 1910–1940

A sky streaked with azure blue stretches over a gray landscape in this surreal, vertical painting. The sky and land meet halfway up the canvas at a series of short, sharp, charcoal-gray peaks, like canine teeth. Small, diffuse, butter-yellow ovals waft above the peaks. Nine fluffy, cotton-ball like shapes cast narrow shadows across the gray-streaked plane. Three amorphous shapes float over the land closer to us. A ginger-brown, drippy form is to our left, a teal-green, bean-shaped object surrounded with fuzzy white tentacles is to our right, and a peacock-blue, L-shaped drip floats in the distance near the horizon. Thinly painted white and gray lines squiggle or sweep onto the canvas from the left edge. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right, “Yves Tanguy 29.”

The Look of Amber

Yves Tanguy

1929

Oil on canvas Accession ID 1984.75.1

On View: East Building Upper Level, Gallery E415

Paolo and Francesca

Joseph Cornell

1943-1948

Box construction Accession ID 2023.124.16

On View: East Building Upper Level, Gallery E415

A cartoonish tooth-like form and a fork float against a roughly oval field in this abstracted wooden sculpture. Presumably the shirt front of the sculpture's title, the tooth-like form takes up the left half of the composition. It has a rounded top with two pointed root-like legs below, and has two dots like eyes near the top. The fork to our right points downward and the four tines are cut off by the bottom edge of the composition. The shirt front, dots, and fork are carved and painted nickel gray so they look like thick outlines in low relief. The background to our left and over the shirt front is black. The area between the shirt front and fork is dark gray, and the field to our right of the fork is silvery gray. The sculpture hangs on a white wall, and it casts a narrow shadow from the bottom edge.

Shirt Front and Fork

Jean (Hans) Arp

1922

Painted wood Accession ID 1983.3.1

On View: East Building Upper Level, Gallery E415

The sculpture is an abstract, elongated form. It is upright and smoothly curved, with a shiny black surface. The sculpture is comprised of curving segments that blend together, almost like an abstracted human leg with exaggerated bulges. It stands on a square block, which is placed on a cylindrical base of the same glossy black material.

Agnes E. Meyer

Constantin Brâncuși

1929

Marble Accession ID 1967.13.4

On View: East Building Upper Level, Gallery E415

A man and a woman seem to float against a background of nested, concentric rings in this abstracted, vertical painting. The center of the rings is just above the center of the composition. The rings are further divided into quadrants, so each ring is a different color at the top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right. The rings are in shades of lemon and golden yellow, sky, slate, and cobalt blue, lilac and violet purple, red, mint green, and white. Where the rings get close to the edges of the composition, they become more muted in tone. The woman is to our right of center. Created in areas of flat color, she has a royal blue, feathered hat and blond hair. Closer inspection reveals that her brown dress or jacket is made of a piece of paper collaged to the painting. A dash of vivid blue suggests a skirt, and a black smudge there is difficult to interpret. To our left of center, a man wearing a white shirt and black jacket seems to fall backward, toward the center of the circles. One arm, amethyst purple, is flung up and that hand is red. A curving line, like a wide, flattened U, encloses the circles along the bottom edge of the composition along its width, and the circles extend off the corners to the sides and at the top. The artist signed the work in black block letters across the bottom center: “ROBERT DELAUNAY.”

Political Drama

Robert Delaunay

1914

Oil and collage on cardboard Accession ID 1971.2.1

On View: East Building Upper Level, Gallery E415

$Blades of forest, pine, and sage green intermixed with slivers of cobalt and sky blue, crimson red, and rose pink create a band of abstracted tree-like forms across this horizontal painting. The blues, red, and pink are concentrated on a structure, presumably a tree, at the front center. To our left of center, geometric shapes like circles, triangles, and rectangles create the impression of a beaked bird, with each shape being fractured into bands of emerald green, royal blue, brick red, and butter yellow. Closer examination finds other birds nearly obscured within the dark, accordion-like patterns of the leaves, including a flock of red-eyed, black, razor-like birds to our left and another creature with a bird-like head and humanoid body to our right. Across the top third of the composition, the sky is pale blue to our left and brightens to shell pink and then light yellow around a disk-like form, to our right. A couple geometric, stylized shapes read as clouds near the upper left corner. Next to a tiny, white line drawing of two abstracted, animal-like forms in the lower right corner, the artist signed his name, “max ernst,” in white paint and the date, “1939” in red.$