Footnotes

We are grateful to Dr. Susan Weininger, Professor Emerita, Roosevelt University, for her assistance in cataloging this work.

Provenance
Wendell & Esther Wilcox Collection, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (a gift from the artist).
Bequeathed from the above to the present owner in 1981.


The subject of the present work is a dark and desolate landscape dominated by a tilted telephone pole, its wires disconnected and falling to the ground. A small table and overturned chair occupy the middle ground toward the left of the composition. An old-fashioned upright telephone sits atop the table, its earpiece fallen to the ground (still connected to the phone) and its cord trailing on the ground, disconnected from any source of power. A piece of paper, perhaps a letter, is on the table, along with another on the ground. This theme of obstructed communication is one that can be seen in other works by the artist that relate to this one; however, Wires Down is notably the only example of this theme that is not an interior scene.

Abercrombie's records cite several versions of a subject that she called Intermission (Telephone), only one of which has come to light (a painting from 1952, formerly in the collection of Margot Andreas, a good friend of the artist). Unlike Wires Down, Intermission is set in a simple closed interior with wainscoted walls. The furnishings consist of a table, an overturned chair, an old-fashioned telephone sitting on a wall-mounted bracket, its receiver dropped to the floor atop a piece of paper. A white stoneware pitcher, an object that makes regular appearances in the artist's work, along with a cup and spoon, sit on the table. The picture hanging on the back wall is a device often seen in Abercrombie's paintings, and in this case is a self-portrait, making her presence in the painting undeniable.

Intermission conveys the sense of a disturbance, a phone call disrupted, a chair overturned, something momentous having just occurred, causing the protagonist to quickly flee. The same feeling pervades Wires Down, augmented by the certainty that communication cannot be reestablished. There is the mysterious quality, so typical of Abercrombie, making the viewer consider what could have caused a calamity so momentous that all contact with others is severed? The seemingly simple landscape of Wires Down, although controlled and austere, reverberates with the force of what has happened: a complete loss of the ability to connect.

Unlike the bounded interior of Intermission, Wires Down imagines an endless inability to relate to others, a vast emptiness. Despite her public persona as the life of the party and center of attention, Abercrombie always struggled with insecurity and loneliness, which is on clear display in the poignant image in Wires Down. While in Intermission, the artist, who is present in her interiors whether or not she physically appears, makes it clear by including her self-portrait that she is a witness to, if not a participant in, whatever event has transpired, Wires Down is considerably grimmer, offering no hope of regaining connections. The basic machinery is disrupted.

Abercrombie's composition, balanced and clear, gives even more weight to the bleak theme. The telephone pole and the table are arranged on opposite sides of the center of the painting, the table slightly closer to the picture plane than the pole, creating a diagonal in space. At the same time, the table and overturned chair balance the heavier top of the telephone pole. It is simple, but stable, on the surface and in three dimensions.

Wires Down is forceful as well as poignant. It speaks to the sadness of broken or hopeless connections in a way that combines the mystery and personal resonance so characteristic of the artist with what feels like a heartbreaking cry in the darkness.

Excerpted text from Susan Weininger