Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
JoAnne Carson
American; 20th-century, 21st-century
Omaha, NE: Joslyn Art Museum
93%
Night Watch. 1983. Canvas, wood, oil, and fabric
Like Lee Bontecou’s wall-mounted sculptures, this work is difficult to photograph. What isn’t readily noticeable in the above picture is how the half-circles of fruit extend far out into the gallery space. There are several passages where three-dimensional representations of furniture overlap two-dimensional representations of different furniture. The result is splendidly disorienting. A Picassoesque bull gallops out of a nightmare and across the lower middle; he disappears when the work is viewed from the right-hand side. Things are the wrong color in exactly the same way that they are under moonlight or starlight. The breeze is blowing through a broken window, fluttering the curtains; fragments of text swirl around like the thoughts of the day pieced together subconsciously in dreams. Altogether this is a stunningly effective evocation of the mental state of someone awakened by a crash in the middle of the night, and it is my favorite work in the Joslyn Art Museum. (WC, 2025)