COCOON NO. 2
LYGIA CLARK, 1959
Stand right in front of this one. Looks flat, right? Small diamond. Black, cream. A painting. Now move over a little. There. The black part folds out from the wall. And behind it, this little pocket of dark. So the painting has an inside now. The year Lygia Clark made this, 1959, she wrote a letter to Mondrian. Piet Mondrian. Grids. Primary colors. Very flat. One problem. He'd been dead for fifteen years. She writes him anyway. "If I work, Mondrian..." She's talking to the dead guy directly. And then, basically, tells him there's more to it than making surfaces. Which is a pretty good letter to send the guy who spent his life perfecting the surface. Clark had been making geometric paintings too. Then she and a group of Brazilian artists started calling themselves the Neo-Concretists. Translated from art manifesto: Geometry had gotten way too good at behaving itself. Too clean. Too rational. Too much like math homework. They wanted it to act more like a thing. Something with a body. Something you had to deal with. And Clark starts here. Sheet metal. Painted like a picture. Hung like a picture. Then she folds one part out. That's it. Tiny move. But now there's a front, a side, an inside. She called these Cocoons. Which fits. A cocoon isn't really the finished thing. It's the thing while it's becoming something else. And that's basically what this is. Not quite a painting anymore. Not quite the sculptures Clark is about to start making either. After this, her work keeps coming farther off the wall until eventually you're supposed to pick it up. But here's the first move. And there's a Mondrian hanging in this room. Which is nice.