Past

Past

Art can record past moments. The pieces in this section document artists’ interactions with artistic mediums. Take note of coffee stains, scuffs, tears, and unfulfilled plans: residues of history. These works do not depict conventional movement, but their preservation of past activity infuses the compositions with dynamic energy. You’re invited to stand before these deceptively static objects and allow your imagination to animate their memories.

Click the images below to engage with each artwork.

A prism refracts two beams of light around a palm tree, with a rainbow at the forefront. The background has been colored shades of green and yellow with a circular shape permeating throughout the work.
Rockne Krebs, Sun Dog Green, 1977
A three-dimensional magenta geometric shape is framed on either side by a brown and a black plane. The paper is lightly smudged, wrinkled, and stained.
Peter Pinchbeck, Sketch for Large Scale Freestanding Color Planes, November 6, 1973, 1973
Splatters of black ink arranged in crisscrossing patterns, bordered by jagged lines in blue ballpoint pen, set against off-white paper.
Thomas Sills, Black Snow, 1968
Various black lines spread across a white canvas shaded in gray with the most pronounced, bracket shaped lines in the center of the work. Small details of color shaded in around the black lines.
Carroll Sockwell, Untitled, 1970
Two sheets of paper with diagonal black rectangle at bottom
Richard Tuttle, Print, 1976
Trails of warm toned brown oil spread across the length of the rectangular work. Air pockets bubble around the edges and the Masonite has buckled and wrinkled underneath the Plexiglas.
Heléne Aylon, Brown Light #4: Floating, c. 1973–1975
Daniel Brush's Painting #2 (1973) is a narrow eight-foot-tall canvas, that is divided into three sections. The middle section consists of beige horizontal lines painted closely together that repeat over and over again. The beige hues alternate between cool and warm tones.
Daniel Brush, Painting #2, 1973
A black ink etching reminiscent of two geometric birds. Some black ink has spilled onto the matting.
Dorothy Dehner, Bird Machine I, 1952
Two three-dimensional, yellowish-brown block figures sketched atop a heavy black paper background. Figure on the right is rotated slightly for a sidelong view of two long rectangular standing blocks with another block laying horizontally on top of them.
Helene Dawson Fesenmaier, Untitled, 1970
On lined paper, a formation of color on the right side references a still life that is seen from another angle on the bottom of the page in black and white.
Charles Hewitt, Untitled, 1975
Past
Present
Potential