Black Chord, 1964
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In December 1957, Nevelson received a case of liquor for Christmas and saw sculptural potential in its segmented cubic form. Over the next few years, she began scavenging milk boxes, lettuce crates, and other wooden containers, which she filled with assemblages of wooden scraps and stacked into her “wall” works, including Black Chord.
Nevelson’s wall works evoke architecture, particularly New York’s jagged skyline, which was a vital source of inspiration: “I saw the Empire State Building when it was going up,” Nevelson recounted. “So many buildings that have come up and gone down. And the skyline is in constant change.” The tearing down of tenements in Kips Bay, where the artist resided in the late 1950s, yielded the crates, broken furniture, and other wooden fragments with which she built her early walls.
Black Chord, 1964
Louise Nevelson, Black Chord, 1964. Painted wood, 104 1/2 × 117 3/4 × 12 1/4 in. (265.4 × 299.1 × 31.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz 91.1a-e. © 2025 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York