{
"data": {
"id": 318300,
"accession_number": "2019.58",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Blue Rational/Irrational, 1969. Al Loving (American, 1935\u20132005). Acrylic on canvas; 147 x 322.5 cm (57 7/8 x 126 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the KeyBank Collection, 2019.58. \u00a9 The Estate of Al Loving and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York",
"current_location": "224A Contemporary Corridor",
"title": "Blue Rational/Irrational",
"creation_date": "1969",
"creation_date_earliest": 1964,
"creation_date_latest": 1974,
"artists_tags": [
"Black American Artists",
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "Acrylic on canvas",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Contemporary Art",
"collection": "CONTEMP - Painting",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "147 x 322.5 cm (57 7/8 x 126 15/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"No Extent Specified": {
"height": 1.47,
"width": 3.225
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": "\u00a9 The Estate of Al Loving and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York",
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 393229,
"title": "Contemporary Installation",
"description": "Contemporary Installation. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).",
"opening_date": "2021-04-12T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 443702,
"title": "Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus",
"description": "Currents and Constellations: Black Art in Focus. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 20-June 26, 2022).",
"opening_date": "2022-02-20T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Alvin Loving: Paintings. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (December 19, 1969\u2013January 25, 1970).",
"opening_date": "1969-12-19T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Frieze Masters. Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, NY (October 5 - October 9, 2016)",
"opening_date": "2016-10-05T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Collection of the artist",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1969-?",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(KeyBank Collection, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "early 1990s-2019",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "2019-",
"sortorder": 3
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "This work debuted in Al Loving: Paintings (1969) at the Whitney Museum, the museum\u2019s first solo exhibition by an African American artist.",
"description": "Across both canvases of this large-scale diptych, Loving evokes a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface through strategic layerings of cubic forms and carefully calibrated color juxtapositions. Around the time Loving made this work he wrote, \u201cI am tired of objects on walls. The wall must be pierced, brought forward, pushed back.\u201d Blue Rational/Irrational is a bold manifestation of this sentiment.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79875896"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cochrane, Mary, ed. The Appropriate Object. Buffalo, NY: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 1989.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: pp. 41- 49",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Patel, Samir S, ed. Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964-1980. New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2006.",
"page_number": "54-55",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cooke, Lynne, Douglas Crimp, et al. Outliers and American Vanguard Art. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2018.",
"page_number": "96-97",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Collection. \"Building Blocks: A Look at Al Loving's Blue Rational/Irrational, 1969.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 60, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 18-19.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 19; Mentioned: P. 18-19.",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Yoder, Dean. \u201cHidden Complexities: The Conservation of Al Loving's Blue Rational/Irrational.\u201d Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 36-37.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 36, 37: Mentioned: P. 4, 36-37.",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2019.58",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Gift of the KeyBank Collection",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Betty and Max Ratner Gallery",
"athena_id": 318300,
"creators": [
{
"id": 63955,
"description": "Al Loving (American, 1935\u20132005)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": null,
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1935",
"death_year": "2005",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2019-03-04T00:00:00-05:00",
"sortable_date": 1964,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1969",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "cover",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:05:49.182000"
}
}