Accession Number
2008/2.236

Title
Untitled

Artist(s)
Steve Keister

Object Creation Date
1998

Medium & Support
gouache on paper

Dimensions
9 1/2 x 12 5/8 in. (23.97 x 32.07 cm)

Credit Line
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, a joint initiative of the Trustees of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the Nation Gallery of Art, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute for Museum and Library Services

Label copy
Steve Keister
United States, born 1949
Untitled
1998
Gouache on paper
2008/2.236

Subject matter
“Over the past 15 years, the sculptor Steve Keister has amassed an authoritative knowledge of Olmec, Maya and Toltec sculpture, owing primarily to his annual visits to archeological sites in Mexico and Central America. Using castings of consumer-product packaging and information from his fieldwork and digital photographic notes, his works establish a strange limbo of suspended signifiers. Meso-American figuration is repositioned in the present, relieved of its sacral deployment....” (Joe Fyfe, “Steve Keister at feature,” Art in America, Feb 2008)

Physical Description
Drawing on spiral sketchbook paper in terra cotta and ivory gouache with graphite pencil.

Primary Object Classification
Painting

Primary Object Type
study

Additional Object Classification(s)
Drawing

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
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Keywords
Native American
South American
ceramics (object genre)
drawing (image-making)
earthenware
sketches
terracottas (sculptural works)