Landforms

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

This grouping offers an eclectic view into the use of natural forms by artists working across media. The sculpture Ahulani by Deborah Butterfield dates to a transitional moment in the artist’s career. By 1991, she was still producing sculptures made from welded pieces of found steel but was also using cast bronze, a medium she started to experiment with in 1985. The lost wax casting method afforded durability while alluding to her earlier works made from whitewashed mud, straw, and branches. David Hockney’s 1990 Mountain from Stunt Road furthers the artist’s focus on the California landscape and is among the more figurative mountainscapes that he painted in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, Bones of a Whale exemplifies the use of one of Jamie Wyeth’s preferred motifs: large bones strewn across an eerie, unrecognizable landscape.