Memorial for an Art World Body (Nevermore)

Jo Baer

2009

An oil on unstretched canvas in which Jo Baer assembles mythic, anatomical, and avian imagery into a contemplative elegy that mourns and probes the “body” of the art world.

A deep, velvety black field holds a luminous moon and a blood‑red–winged bird, while constellation lines, ghostly female figures (including a Venus on a shell), and clusters of crows float and overlap like memories or fragments of a vanished scene.

Late in her career Baer moves away from strict minimalism toward a layered, narrative figuration that marries art‑historical iconography and feminist institutional critique, opening a path for abstraction’s return to storytelling and social reckoning.

Palette

Exhibitions

Recent Acquisitions: Painting and Sculpture III

1969

Frank O'Hara/In Memory of My Feelings

1967

New Acquisitions: Lachaise Torso; Prints

1934

Sculpture from the Collection

1972