TEXT A That Louis Nevelson is
believed by many critics to be the greatest twentieth-century sculptor is all
the more remarkable because the greatest resistance to women artists has
been, until recently, in the field of sculptor. Since Neolithic times, sculpture
has been considered the prerogative of men, partly, perhaps for purely physical
reasons: it was erroneously assumed that women were not suited for the hard
manual labor required in sculpting stone, carving wood, or working in metal. It
has been only during the twentieth century that women sculptors have been
recognized as major artists, and it has been in the United States, especially
since the decades of the fifties and sixties that women sculptors have shown the
greatest originality and creative power. Their rise to prominence parallels the
development of sculpture itself in the United States, while there had been a few
talented sculptors in the United States before the 1940s, it was only after
1945--when New York was rapidly becoming the art capital of the world--that
major sculpture was produced in the United States. Some of the best were the
works of women. By far the most outstanding of these women is
Louis Nevelson, who in the eyes of many critics is the most original female
artist alive today. One famous and influential critic, Hilton Kramer, said of
her work, "For my- self, I think Ms. Nevelson succeeds where the painters often
fail." Her work have been compared to the Cubist constructions
of Picasso, the Surrealistic objects of Miro, and Merzbau of Schwitters.
Nevelson would be the first to admit that she has been influenced by all of
these, as well as by American sculpture, and by native American and
pre-Columbian art, but she has absorbed all these influences and still created a
distinctive art that expresses the urban landscape and the aesthetic sensibility
of the twentieth century. Nevelson says, "I have always wanted to show the world
that art is everywhere except that it has to pass through a creative
mind." Using mostly discarded wooden objects like packing
crates, broken pieces of furniture, and abandoned architectural ornaments, all
of which she has hoarded for years, she assembles architectural constructions of
great beauty and power. Creating very freely with no sketches, she glues and
nails objects together, paints them in boxes. These assemblages, walls, even
entire environments create a mysterious, almost awe-inspiring atmosphere
Although she denied any symbolic or religious intent in her works, their
three-dimensional grandeur and even their titles, such as Sky Cathedral and
Night Cathedral, suggests such connotations. In some ways, her most ambitious
works are closer to architecture than to traditional sculpture, but then neither
Louis Nevelson nor her art fits into any neat category. (450) The author regards Nevelson’s sculpture in the art world as "remarkable" (Line 2, Para. I ) because ______.
A．Nevelson’s sculptures are difficult to understand B．few of the artists prominent in the twentieth century have been sculptors C．women sculptors have found it especially difficult to be accepted and recognized as major artists D．many art critics have favored painting over sculpture in writing about developments in the art world