Collection Online as of March 20, 2023

Blue Rational/Irrational (right panel)

1969

Part of a set. See all set records

Al Loving

(American, 1935–2005)

America

Acrylic on canvas

Gift of the KeyBank Collection 2019.58.b

Location

224A Contemporary Corridor

Fun Fact

This was included in <em>Al Loving: Paintings </em>(1969) at the Whitney Museum, the museum’s first solo exhibition of work 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.

Provenance

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

Citations

Cooke, Lynne, and Douglas Crimp. Outliers and American Vanguard Art. 2018. 96-97

Bowling, Frank, and Kellie Jones. Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980 : Frank Bowling, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Ed Clark, Melvin Edwards, Fred Eversley, Sam Gilliam, Daniel LaRue Johnson, Tom Lloyd, Al Loving, Joe Overstreet, Howardena Pindell, Haywood Bill Rivers, Alma Thomas, Jack Whitten, William T. Williams ; [Guest Curator Kellie Jones]. 2006. 55

Exhibition history

Alvin Loving: Paintings. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (December 19, 1969–January 25, 1970).

Contemporary Gallery Reinstallation 2021. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).