The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 20, 2025

Illusionistic diptych created from two acrylic paintings pushed together, with each appearing to create the frame of four cubes connected to make a larger diamond, the corners conjoining. The frames intersect over a sky blue background, frames colored in shades of grey and blue but outlined with intersecting blue, red, orange, and yellow.

Blue Rational/Irrational

1969

Al Loving

(American, 1935–2005)
America
Acrylic on canvas
147 x 322.5 cm (57 7/8 x 126 15/16 in.)
Gift of the KeyBank Collection 2019.58
© The Estate of Al Loving and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York
Location: 224A Contemporary Corridor

Did You Know?

This work debuted in Al Loving: Paintings (1969) at the Whitney Museum, the museum’s first solo exhibition by an African American artist.

Description

Across both canvases of this large-scale diptych, Loving evokes a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface through strategic layerings of cubic forms and carefully calibrated color juxtapositions. Around the time Loving made this work he wrote, “I am tired of objects on walls. The wall must be pierced, brought forward, pushed back.” Blue Rational/Irrational is a bold manifestation of this sentiment.
  • 1969-?
    Collection of the artist
    early 1990s-2019
    (KeyBank Collection, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)
    2019-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cochrane, Mary, ed. The Appropriate Object. Buffalo, NY: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1989. Mentioned: pp. 41- 49
    Patel, Samir S, ed. Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2006. 54-55
    Cooke, Lynne, Douglas Crimp, et al. Outliers and American Vanguard Art. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2018. 96-97
    Collection. "Building Blocks: A Look at Al Loving's Blue Rational/Irrational, 1969.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 18-19. Reproduced: P. 19; Mentioned: P. 18-19.
    Yoder, Dean. “Hidden Complexities: The Conservation of Al Loving's Blue Rational/Irrational.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 36-37. Reproduced: P. 36, 37: Mentioned: P. 4, 36-37.
  • Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 20-June 26, 2022).
    Contemporary Installation. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).
    Frieze Masters. Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, NY (October 5 - October 9, 2016)
    Alvin Loving: Paintings. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (December 19, 1969–January 25, 1970).
  • {{cite web|title=Blue Rational/Irrational|url=false|author=Al Loving|year=1969|access-date=20 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2019.58