Object Notes

During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, ribbed wall fountains with matching domed covers such as this, along with their accompanying oval basins, were made and decorated by the hundreds at Jingdezhen (Ching-tê Chên), China.

In the late 17th century, aristocratic European taste moved away from imported blue and white porcelains, and people were willing to pay more for the polychrome enamels exported to Jingdezhen.

This portrait is a memorial to Philip Evergood's mother, Flora, who died on March 10, 1927, shortly after her son began this portrait. As he later remembered, "My mother was dying of cancer in a little room on Lexington Avenue.

The Hohokam people, who lived in present-day south central Arizona, had developed a significant pottery tradition by about 500 CE. Hohokam ceramics are easily recognized by their buff‑colored clay and dark red painting. Fluid brushwork, spontaneous in effect yet precisely controlled, depicts both highly stylized life forms and a variety of geometric motifs.

This untitled, 1988 "stack" by Donald Judd embodies all the finest qualities of the artist's work: uncompromising literalness, lush materiality, and seductive color. In this work, Judd plays with the question of what essential elements make up a sculpture.

Mimbres potters developed one of the Southwest’s most appealing painting styles, distinguished by geometric compositions and narrative imagery that provides an eloquent record of Mimbres life. The painting on many Mimbres vessels suggests concepts of sacred space or cosmic geography.