Alan Shields

Alan Shields made an impression on the New York art world in the late 1960s with three-dimensional “paintings” made of brightly painted strips of canvas and other fabrics embellished with sewing-machine stitched patterns and psychedelic colors and affixed to armatures, woven over frames, and hung from the ceiling. The multi-colored dots, radiating lines, and concentric circles on this painted wooden bowl recall a mandala motif or a ritualistic folk object. Embodying what some critics called “counterculture modernism,” Shield’s work in a diverse range of materials was in sharp contrast to the cool austerity of 1960s Minimalism.