Article cover
Essay

OPEN ACCESS

Vija Celmins: The Art of Enervation

Harrison Adams

Published online:

09 Mar 2023

Abstract

Abstract

The painter Vija Celmins has long been an outlier in narratives of postwar American art. Extensive formal analysis of her work, from her early still lifes to her later night skies and ocean surfaces, shows that Celmins was deeply invested in the issues of time, entropy, and energy that proved crucial to her contemporaries, like Robert Smithson and Hans Haacke. However, Celmins found ways of objectifying energy through naturalistic representation and the most traditional of media, painting and drawing. She explores these issues by discovering contradictions within classical mimesis.

Other articles in this issue:

Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte Issues

Volume 87 (2024)
Volume 86 (2023)
Volume 85 (2022)
Volume 84 (2021)
Volume 83 (2020)
Volume 82 (2019)
Volume 81 (2018)
Volume 80 (2017)
Volume 79 (2016)

Get instant, unlimited access to this journal

Related titles

Would you like to receive monthly information about new publications and events?

DKV
EUR
English

Deutscher Kunstverlag

Genthiner Straße 13

10785 Berlin

+49 (0)30 / 27 90 76 - 0

Neumarkter Straße 28

81673 München