Toy

Artist William Baziotes (American, 1912 - 1963)

Date1949

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsFramed: 27 × 22 5/8in. (68.6 × 57.5cm)
Overall: 18 × 14 3/16in. (45.7 × 36cm)

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Credit LineEdward W. Root Bequest

Terms

20th Century

Object number57.72

Description

On View

Not on view

Collections

20th-Century Paintings

CopyrightPresumed copyright: the artist or the artist's representative/heir(s).

Label TextDuring the 1940s New York City-based artists such as William Baziotes, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, painted in a non-representational style that has come to be known as Abstract Expressionism. These painters derived inspiration from psychology and mythology because they sought connections to spiritual forces that the artists believed have been lost in so-called civilized cultures. At the start of the decade, many artists incorporated totemic figures and symbols into their art works but some, like Rothko, gradually removed representational forms altogether. Not so for Baziotes. He continued to find phantoms emerging from his intuitive painting method. Toy seems almost the portrait of a strange, wide-eyed animal that exists in a curiously defined space. What, for instance, is that glowing orb? The viewer is expected to draw on his or her own childhood memories, dreams and similar subconscious states to find a connection with the enigmatic creature. Mary E. Murray