Color of Medals

This dynamic artwork by Sam Gilliam straddles the categories of painting and sculpture, as a hybrid of both.  It possesses all the expressive colors and brushwork of a painting, but, like sculpture, it also reaches out into real space.  Its multiple hinged panels recall the moveable altarpieces created for European churches, as well as painted Japanese folding screens.  However, Gillliam's abstract forms and brilliant colors are purposefully open to the personal responses of each viewer.

Gilliam and his assistants poured through drawers of old military medals to find inspiration for the shapes and colors used in this artwork.  The stencil-like circles cut out of the wood are simplified forms of medals hanging from ribbons.  Gilliam also printed photographic images of actual medals onto the wood support, and then partially obscured them with paint.  For example, a greatly enlarged image of a French World War I medal that commemorates the 1916 Battle of Verdun is printed at the upper left.  Its full inscription reads: "On ne passe pas" (None shall pass), referring to the Franco-German border, which became the heavily fortified Maginot Line in World War II.