Organic, Geometric, and Personal: Approaches to Composition During the 1970s

Akron Art Museum

This grouping offers a glance into the divergent approaches to composition that exemplify the broad gamut of artistic discourse in the late 1970s. Sol Lewitt’s Floor Piece #2, one of eighteen related sculptures, epitomizes the artist’s investigation into open modular cubic structures of the mid-1970s and recalls his 1966 maxim that “the most interesting thing about the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting.” As in similar works, the cube is deployed by Lewitt as a “grammatical device from which the work may proceed.” Lynda Benglis’s intuitive approach to organic forms and her application of gold leaf on the sinuous, wall-mounted sculpture stands firmly as an alternative to the monochromatic and geometric use of industrial materials championed by artists like Lewitt. The work dates to a pivotal period in the artist’s career when novel techniques for metalizing screen armatures enabled her to create seemingly lighter and supple metal works. Meanwhile, after an abrupt and forceful departure from nonreferential abstract painting, Philip Guston’s pictorial vocabulary had distilled several motifs that appear in various works by 1977. The cat-o’-nine tails whip immediately recalls depictions of the Passion by the Old Masters, whom Guston described as major influences, while the worn boots and shoe soles protruding out of an open box evoke war and genocide—a somber approach to the unfolding horrors of the 20th century that, according to the artist, partially drove his rejection of formalist abstraction.