Representation of a Landscape as a Wall, 2012
- Medium
- Acrylic, latex, and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- 168 x 583 3/16 in. (426.72 x 1481.33 cm)
- Accession Number
- 2013.5
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Purchase with funds provided by the Acquisitions and Collections Committee and the Drawings Committee
This monumental painting on paper, measuring nearly 50 feet long, references the tangled vines and gnarled trees of McMillian’s native South. The roiling “landscape” of paint drips, pours, slashes, and pools hangs from the ceiling on cables like a theater curtain: wavy, obscuring what is behind. McMillian’s Southern landscape, then, is a façade, behind which lie all sorts of tragedies, histories, feelings, burdens, and hidden pathways out. Among the most ambitious of his works, Representation of a Landscape as a Wall is labor-intensive, sincere, and emotionally charged—the result of McMillian’s extensive grappling with the social and political histories of the American South, especially as they pertain to race.
