High Point
Terry Adkins’ genre-blurring practice, combining sculpture, live music, spoken word, and video, drew on the traditions of modernist abstraction as well as vernacular artforms of the American South. His highly distinctive sculptural objects frequently incorporate found materials, many scavenged from historical and industrial sites. Adkins, a musician himself who staged multimedia performances with his group the Lone Wolf Recital Corps, regarded his sculptures as tangible interpretations of sound. "My quest," he said, "has been to find a way to make music as physical as sculpture might be and sculpture as ethereal as music is."
Over the course of four days In March 1993, Adkins fabricated eight sculptures, including this one, using materials sourced in Greensboro, North Carolina. High Point is a floor-based work composed of jettisoned equipment from the Norfolk Southern Railroad, namely rusted steel tie plates punctured with railroad spikes. Its material composition and curious form evokes the coal train that winds its way through Greensboro and the nearby town of High Point, while its title is a coded nod to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, who grew up in the neighborhood. Though powerfully physical in its sculptural construction, High Point recalls the ephemerality of improvisatory music through its reference to the vanished history of Greensboro.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Adkins created his cerebral and idiosyncratic work in dialogue with trends in Post-Minimalism, an approach to contemporary sculptural practice that moved away from the geometry of Minimal art in favor of open forms and work invested with personal and psychical significance. In this way, High Point might be seen as a challenge to Carl Andre’s floor-based sculptures, among the most recognizable works of Minimalism, which were informed by Andre’s work on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Whereas Andre arranged standard industrial materials such as bricks and steel plates in flat and rigorously ordered grids, Adkins opted here for an energetic and asymmetrical form that forcefully evokes the history of its source site: a Southern railroad constructed through Black enslaved labor.
Over the course of four days In March 1993, Adkins fabricated eight sculptures, including this one, using materials sourced in Greensboro, North Carolina. High Point is a floor-based work composed of jettisoned equipment from the Norfolk Southern Railroad, namely rusted steel tie plates punctured with railroad spikes. Its material composition and curious form evokes the coal train that winds its way through Greensboro and the nearby town of High Point, while its title is a coded nod to jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, who grew up in the neighborhood. Though powerfully physical in its sculptural construction, High Point recalls the ephemerality of improvisatory music through its reference to the vanished history of Greensboro.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Adkins created his cerebral and idiosyncratic work in dialogue with trends in Post-Minimalism, an approach to contemporary sculptural practice that moved away from the geometry of Minimal art in favor of open forms and work invested with personal and psychical significance. In this way, High Point might be seen as a challenge to Carl Andre’s floor-based sculptures, among the most recognizable works of Minimalism, which were informed by Andre’s work on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Whereas Andre arranged standard industrial materials such as bricks and steel plates in flat and rigorously ordered grids, Adkins opted here for an energetic and asymmetrical form that forcefully evokes the history of its source site: a Southern railroad constructed through Black enslaved labor.
Artwork Details
- Title: High Point
- Artist: Terry Adkins (American, Washington, D.C. 1953–2014 New York, New York)
- Date: 1993
- Medium: Oxidized steel
- Dimensions: overall: 43 1/2 × 36 1/2 × 9 in., 324.8 lb. (110.5 × 92.7 × 22.9 cm, 147.3 kg)
- Classification: Sculpture
- Credit Line: Purchase, Louis and Bessie Adler Foundation Inc. Gift, 1994
- Object Number: 1994.320a-j
- Rights and Reproduction: © Estate of Terry Adkins
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art
More Artwork
A slider containing 5 items.
Press the down key to skip to the last item.
Press the down key to skip to the last item.
Returned to lender
Terry Adkins
2010
Returned to lender
Terry Adkins
Clifford Owens
2011, printed 2024
Returned to lender
Terry Adkins
2013
Returned to lender
Terry Adkins
1999
Melvin Edwards
1988
Research Resources
The Met provides unparalleled resources for research and welcomes an international community of students and scholars. The Met's Open Access API is where creators and researchers can connect to the The Met collection. Open Access data and public domain images are available for unrestricted commercial and noncommercial use without permission or fee.
To request images under copyright and other restrictions, please use this Image Request form.
Feedback
We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. If you have comments or questions about this object record, please complete and submit this form. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments.