Tangled Forms

Two- and three-dimensional artworks that include (or are characterized by) closely meshed, overlapping, and typically curvilinear lines. Such forms may be in figurative art, as in the overlapping of serpent and muscular sinews in the Ancient Greek sculpture Laocoön and His Sons. They have also played a central role in the history of abstraction, including in Hiberno-Saxon designs such as those found in the 9th-century Book of Kells, as well as in many instances of traditional Islamic art and architecture, Jackson Pollock, and Brice Marden and in scrap-metal sculptures by John Chamberlain.