Memorial for an Art World Body (Nevermore)
Jo Baer
American, 1929–2025
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.
Medium
Oil on unstretched canvas
Dimensions
72 x 60 1/4" (182.9 x 153 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis in honor of Kenneth C. Griffin’s 50th birthday
Accession
726.2018
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
