File:Mernet Larsen Escalator 1988.jpg

Painting by Mernet Larsen, Escalator (acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 44" x 44", 1988). The image illustrates an early body of work in Mernet Larsen's career: her 1980s and 1990s figurative work with a geometric approach. These were largely abstract works paintings that employed simple shapes, limited palettes and highly textured, built-up surfaces, while drawing on modernist abstract and non-western paintings for compositional inspiration. They were identifiable as titles as figurative through the allusions of their titles, as in this painting. This work was publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications, and acquired by museums.

Artist Mernet Larsen. Copyright held by the artist.

Mernet Larsen

Entire artwork

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating an early body of paintings in Mernet Larsen's career from the 1980s and 1990s when her figurative work shifted in a geometric direction. These paintings were described as cool, distanced, highly textured, and characterized by simple shapes, limited palettes, and physical surface that Larsen scraped, buried, collaged, built up and peeled to produce an effect resembling old weathered walls. She frequently deconstructed modernist abstract and non-western paintings as compositional springboards for the largely abstract works, whose shapes, linear elements and titles alluded to figuration and spatial relationships. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this developmental phase and body of work, which Larsen evolved into the more well-known work that brought her recognition through exhibitions, press coverage and museum acquisitions. Larsen's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Mernet Larsen, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.