American Art Collaborative

Consistent with his additive and appropriative working style, Langlais overlaid many of his first abstract reliefs with animal forms in the early to mid-1960s. When The Monitor or the Merrimack was shown at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1961 it did not include the regal seagull—composed of bisected lobster buoys—or the area of blue painted shoreline. In constructing the original relief, Langlais edged each of the square and rectangular wood scraps with slotted screws and finishing nails. These elements create the effect of iron armor or plating, which may have inspired the title, a reference to a naval battle during the American Civil War between two ironclad warships. Langlais’s addition of the seagull suggests a conscious abandonment of a cold, brutish abstraction in favor of a more lighthearted, accessible aesthetic.