Dovetail

Beatriz Milhazes

Part of the Contemporary American Graphics Collection

Dovetail by Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes unites relief, screenprint, and gold leaf in a complex, harmonious composition.  Referencing the woodworking technique used to produce a strong joint between two boards without any mechanical fasteners, the title Dovetail calls attention to the meticulous craftsmanship that enabled both prints’ crisp, curvaceous forms. The printing blocks, cut with a CNC machine, interlock with the exactitude of a Mondrian abstraction, and while certain shapes are purely geometric, some reference clouds, stars, and other celestial phenomena. The works precision is softened, however, by the addition of hand-drawn floral and rain imagery. Milhazes’s flowers, in particular, are rendered here in a whimsical, relatively detailed style that recalls her depictions of blossoms and fruits in her collaged paintings of the 1990s and early 2000s.