Louise Nevelson
Russia/United States, 1899–1988

If you paint a thing black or you paint a thing white, it takes on a whole different dimension. The white and the black invite different forms. A state of mind enters into it. . . . For me, the black contains the silhouette, the essence of the universe. But the whites move out a little bit into outer space with more freedom.

Louise Nevelson, in Laurie Wilson, “Environments: Moongarden + One,” in Louise Nevelson: Atmospheres and Environments, ed. Tom Armstrong (New York: Clarkson N. Potter and the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980), 105.