<I>Untitled 206</I>
date: label: Date
content: ca. 1970
name: label: Created by
content: Mary Lovelace O'Neal, American, born 1942
notes: label: Caption
content: "The black pigment paintings were as black as they could be." - Mary Lovelace O'Neal.
label: Caption
content: Mary Lovelace O’Neal began working with a rich, velvety pigment called lampblack in 1968. Here, she replicates the deep black using pastel and charcoal. The black foundation of her lampblack works often gives way to straight lines and even emerging colored forms, like the circle. As an artist deeply engaged in the Civil Rights Movement, O’Neal produced the lampblack series in part as a response to the Black Arts Movement, which tended to focus on social and political issues. The pure abstraction of these pieces, which O’Neal relates closely to African art, makes Blackness intangible.
label: Description
content: A charcoal and oil pastel drawing by Mary Lovelace O’Neal from her Lampblack series. Created on a 24 by 18-inch spiral bound sketchbook page, the painting consists of a thick application of charcoal and pastel to create a solid black rectangular field over most of the paper. A colorful circle of pigment appears within negative space in the top half of the drawing, just right of center. The circle is blue in the center, with a red outline blending to purple with highlights of orange and teal along the edges. Surrounding the circle is a square formed by thin lines of negative space, with another line bisecting the square through the center of the circle. There are wide smudges across the circle causing the pigment to extend into the surrounding black. The bottom edge of the paper is jagged from being torn from the sketchbook.
label: Description
content: The painting has a later inscription in graphite on the bottom right corner of the recto. The inscription reads [Untitled 206] and [2020] with a hand drawn arrow pointing towards the title. The artist’s signature [M. Lovelace O’Neal] is above the arrow.
topic: label: Topic
content: African American
label: Topic
content: Abstraction
label: Topic
content: Art
setName: label: See more items in
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture Collection
label: Portfolio/Series
content: Lampblack
label: Classification
content: Visual Arts
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Object number
content: 2024.98.1
objectType: label: Type
content: paintings
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: © Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Courtesy Mary Lovelace O'Neal and Karen Jenkins Johnson, Agent
label: Restrictions & Rights
content: Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: charcoal and oil pastel on paper
label: Dimensions
content: H x W x D: 24 × 18 in. (61 × 45.7 cm)