Blue Post and Lintel I
1965
John Harvey McCracken (American, 1934-2011)
Not on View

John McCracken espoused many of the formal characteristics advocated by his fellow Minimalists, and he incorporated industrial materials, reductive forms and negative space into his sculptures. However, McCracken also felt that his works conveyed an otherworldliness, drawn largely from the idea of the monolith. This suggestion of a spiritual world beyond the sculpture was not uncommon among modern sculptors. Stonehenge, in particular, was fundamentally important to the work of Hepworth and Moore, and its shape can be recognized in Blue Post and Lintel I. And when in 1968 Stanley Kubrick made his futuristic epic 2001, the director chose a plank as his monument, a pure geometric shape representative of hope, and a form for which McCracken was already well known. The present work, notably named after principal architectural elements, was one of McCracken’s first single-color works. Its purity of hue, polished finish and simultaneous reference to architecture and the monolith show how flexibly these sculptures—often placed into one simplistic category—express a variety of sensibilities, depending upon the interests of the artist.

Details

  • Artist Name: John Harvey McCracken (American, 1934-2011)
  • Title: Blue Post and Lintel I
  • Date: 1965
  • Medium: Plywood, fiberglass and lacquer
  • Dimensions: 102 x 32 x 17 in. (259.1 x 81.3 x 43.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick R. Weisman
  • Accession Number: P.1967.23.4
  • Copyright: © The Estate of John McCracken, courtesy David Zwirner, New York

Object Information

Mr. and Mrs. Frederick R. Weisman, Beverly Hills, gift 1967 to;
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1967-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena.

Los Angeles Six

  • Vancouver Art Gallery, 1968-03-30 to 1968-05-05

Works by John McCracken

  • Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1969-02-07 to 1969-03-09

United States of America V Paris Biennale

  • Pasadena, Pasadena Art Museum, 1967-11-28 to 1967-12-31
  • Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1967-09-30 to 1967-11-05

Five Los Angeles Sculptors

  • Irvine, University of California Irivine, Art Gallery, 1966-01-07 to 1966-02-06

R. A. Herold Wing Dedication Exhibition

  • Sacramento, E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1969-11-19 to 1969-12-31

John McCracken Retrospective

  • Castello di Rivoli Museo d' Arte Contemporanea, 2011-02-21 to 2011-06-19

A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968

  • Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 2004-03-14 to 2004-08-03

Paris - Los Angeles

  • Centre Georges Pompidou, 2006-03-08 to 2006-07-17

Beyond Brancusi: The Space of Sculpture

  • Norton Simon Museum, 2013-04-26 to 2014-01-06

West Coast Art

  • Pasadena Art Museum, 1972-06-20 to 1972-09-03

Radical Past: Contemporary Art and Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1999-02-07 to 1999-06-06
  • Armory Center for the Arts, 1999-02-07 to 1999-04-11
  • Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, Calif.), 1999-02-07 to 1999-04-25

Made in America: Contemporary Painting and Sculpture from the Norton Simon Museum

  • Norton Simon Museum, 1999-06-24 to 2000-03-26
  • Bois, Yve-Alain, Artforum, pp. 200-201
  • University of California Irvine, Five Los Angeles Sculptors, 1966, p. 23
  • United States of America V Paris Biennale, 1967, pp. 32-33
  • Vancouver Art Gallery, Los Angeles Six, 1968,
  • Leffingwell, Edward, Heroic Stance-The Scultpure of John McCracken 1965-1986, 1987, pp. 15, 21
  • Colpitt, Frances, Art in America, 1998, pp. 86-93
  • Armory Center for the Arts/Art Center College of Design, Radical Past: Contemporary Art & Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974, 1999, p. 55
  • Humblet, Claudine, La Nouvelle Abstraction Américaine 1950-1970, 2003, Vol. III p. 1594
  • Goldstein, Anne, Diedrich Diederichsen, Jonathan Flatley, James Meyer, and Anne Rorimer, A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, 2004, pp. 288-289, 450
  • Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, John McCracken, 2011, p. 86

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