Base for Delta Theme IV

1967

George Rickey

(American, 1906–2002)

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Culture

America

Medium

stainless steel

Measurements

Overall: 114.5 x 71 x 15 cm (45 1/16 x 27 15/16 x 5 7/8 in.)

Credit Line

Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Mary S. and Louis S. Myers 1991.174.g

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Description

Like the emerging minimalist sculptors, George Rickey was interested in working with restricted and repetitive geometric forms and elements. But within this deliberately narrow vocabulary, he wanted to explore endless variation. Rickey made the first of his "blade" sculptures in 1961. These consist of two or more long pendulums mounted on a vertical support to make possible "an infinite range of relationships of time and directions [within] a limited repertoire of possible movements," as he put it. Some later compositions such as Delta Theme IV consist of very thin blades balanced so that they come to rest on a diagonal. While his upright blade sculptures at rest convey axial stability, the oblique compositions suggest that all is in flux, even without actual motion.