Al Taylor

Al Taylor
1948-1999
Untitled (McGrath)
1982
Acrylic paint on printed magazine pages mounted on paper.
33 13/16 x 33 13/16 inches (85.9 x 85.9 cm)
Gift of Debbie Taylor.
© The Estate of Al Taylor
2019.121
Notes: 

Although he began his career as a painter, Taylor turned to sculpture and drawing in the mid-1980s. During his short life he produced more than 5,000 drawings, which, while related to his three-dimensional constructions by their subjects, form an independent body of work of great sensuousness and painterliness. The present drawing belongs to what Taylor referred to as the Swahili Time group, inspired by a 1980 trip to Africa that marked a turning point in his career. Fascinated with the conception of time he encountered, more fluid than the twenty-four-hour cycle of the Western world, he conceived several series of works in which he tried "to visualize time." The motif in the present work evokes at once a clock and a wheel, a symbol of time. The use of pages from the New York Times Magazine as a support reflects Taylor's desire to rely on materials at hand, another lesson rooted in his time in Africa.

Provenance: 
Debbie Taylor.
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