Word: nevelson
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...house belongs, of course, to the sculptor Louise Nevelson. She has lived in it for close on 30 years, acquiring more rooms, filling them up. By now it is the hive of the queen bee, where Nevelson presides over a small force of workers: carpentry and joinery assistants who help with the sculpture, and her archivist, friend, photographer and general factotum Diana MacKown. Nevelson still leaves it often enough to be a near legendary sight in Manhattan's galleries and shops, and an enduring staple in the pages of Women's Wear Daily. She likes to swathe herself...
...Nevelson's disciplined work habits remain exactly the same as they have been for the past 40 years. Quick to correct those who call her a night owl, she describes herself as a "dawn person"; she likes to rise at 4:30 a.m. and start work, sometimes on the big constructions she is best known for, sometimes on the multitude of studies-a mere fragment of wood glued to a dark mounting sheet-that she produces in lieu of drawings and that form teetering stacks in the upstairs studios...
...Nevelson is past 80, without seeming so. One of the results of having a public mask is that its wearer seems to age more slowly, and no persona in the field of American culture is more instantly recognizable than hers. The armature of bone is a little more visible through the gaunt face when the makeup is off; the immense clumps of false eyelashes, glued double or treble to her lids, seem rather darker against the skin; the expression is slightly more imperious. Otherwise there is little apparent change...
...looks, Nevelson's style may be described as collage driven relentlesrelentlessly to excess, a cross between Catherine the Great and a bag lady: pailady: paisley scarves, blue work shirt, full-length chinchilla, OrientaOriental brocade, embroidered waistband, flounces, a rattling boar-tusk necklace and a black riding cap. (When Nevelson was picked as one of the twelve Best-Dressed Women by Publicist Eleanor Lambert in 1977, few of her acquaintances were surprised: there was, as one friend remarked, nowhere else to put her and no known way to ignore her.) "Personally, I'm dramatic, it seems," she told...
What lies beneath the façade is a self-constructed woman, one of the four or five most distinguished living sculptors. By right, the grande dame of American art is Georgia O'Keeffe, 13 years Nevelson's senior; but O'Keeffe is reported to be almost blind and unable to paint any longer. Not so Nevelson, who sails into her ninth decade with undiminished vigor. The year 1980 brought her a load of work, commissions and exhibitions heavy enough to floor an artist half her age. It was her big year. In its wake, some...