Artwork Information

New Zealand émigré artist Len Lye relied heavily on evolutionary biology and theories of the collective unconscious to create this underwater seascape inhabited by primitive life forms. At right an organism resembling a sea urchin agitates the seabottom as it hurtles toward a tower of sea kelp. Penetrating that leafy mass with an elongated and bifurcated spike, the aggressive subaquatic creature discharges bubbles marked by yellow asterisks, pollenating the ocean floor.

Similar to other artists working in New York in the mid-1940s, Lye in this early Abstract Expressionist composition combines motifs culled from tribal art with shapes resembling cellular structures to evoke the primordial energies animating the universal human spirit. The striped pinwheel at lower right, for example, bears a strong visual affinity to a Māori koru, while the blue and purple cruciform object at left reminds one of an X chromosome. The purple circle at upper center with a red bullseye and concentric red and blue rings recalls the symbol of the Royal British Air Force, a possible reference to Lye’s 1944 move to the US from the United Kingdom.