Untitled

In the early 1970s, Al Loving began to piece together dyed and painted strips of canvas and found fabric in search of a style that more effectively channeled his formal inheritance as a black artist. With its torn, shaggy edges and interwoven method of construction—evocative of the physics of weaving, quilting, or fraying strips of torn cloth—Untitled alludes to a distinctly African American craft tradition and translates it into the language of painted paper. Inspired by fabric accidentally stained by his daughter in his studio, Loving’s strips are washed, sprayed, and splashed with hot, synthetic hues evocative of the glowing palette then only recently afforded by advanced industrial invention. In 1974, Peter Schjeldahl wrote that Loving’s works seem "almost to be caught in the act of moving across the wall."