Untitled (abstract composition)

The American artist Joseph Cornell’s (1903‒1972) surreal worlds of found objects hermetically sealed in small glass cabinets initially served as conceptual models for Ed Flood. He saw them at the Art Institute of Chicago while a student at the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) in the 1960s. This watercolor study for either a Plexiglass cabinet or a wall-mounted sculpture dates from Flood’s first mature period, when his work was shifting from figurative painting towards abstract sculpture. His technique was inspired by the reverse paintings on Plexiglas of SAIC associates Karl Wirsum (See Smart Museum 1998.69) and Jim Nutt, who has cited pinball machines as his source. Flood used it to create spatial illusions, filling glass cabinets with layers of reverse-painted Plexiglas featuring cheerful, lush tropical imagery, pin-up girls, and abstract forms and symbols. (See 2001.219.)

Flood moved to New York City around 1972, to pursue his formal turn toward the problem of literal versus depicted shape. By the late 1970s large biomorphic organisms—fabricated out of painted bent wood or masonite—superceded the miniature forms contained formerly inside the Plexiglass cabinets. Just as the former played on the boundary limits of the cabinet, the larger work played on the boundaries of human-scaled constructions, extending from the walls or floors.