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Mastering the Indeterminate

Webmaster — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 14:07:06 +0000

Mastering the Indeterminate Webmaster April 14, 2023 - 10:07

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In Memory Of 2022, 21.75x5x10 inches, Wood, Fired Ceramic, steel

Tony Moore is still on fire. The creative energy that has fueled his art practice for decades continues to burn bright as evidenced by the ceramic pieces from his three main bodies of work: Fire Paintings, Open Form sculptures, and large-scale sculptures on steel pedestals. These works embody his ongoing evolution as an artist fueled by his insatiable curiosity about what he may next encounter through the making of his art. His practice is a process of experimentation and discovery.

Moore embraces the fact that the chemistry of the materials he uses, including clay, glaze, glass, and metal, in combination with the variables of the wood-fired kiln he employs -- temperature, air flow, positioning of the works within the kiln and the type of wood being burned creates a set of parameters which are essentially unrepeatable. He says, "the kiln is like a crucible where chemical changes take place, where interactions occur, often causing effects which couldn’t be known until they are actually seen."

This is not to say that he is flying blind. Highly skilled, Moore is disciplined and methodical in his work. He states that he is "quite specific in observing the results, the manipulation of materials and the firing process. I'm very measured in what I do." He also knows that indeterminacy opens up creative possibilities which can transform what could be the mundane repetitive production of objects into the enlightened creation of unique works of art. HIs experience of considering and wielding the expressive possibilities of form, line and color, coupled with the practiced hand and perceptive eye in service to the opening heart and mind are crucial as well.

Employing this open mindedness, Moore makes variations within the framework of the several bodies of work he has developed over the years. Explorations of variable process also affect the expression of the narratives he explores. The Fire Paintings he has made since 2018 focus on the many mass migrations of humanity throughout history, including our own time. Instead of predetermining which specific aspect of this vast subject to express, he manipulates the positioning of evocative impressions of twigs into the surface of the wet clay, thereby suggesting figures moving across open ground. Variations of the amount and placement of glaze and glass applied to the clay lead, when fired, to compositional and color surprises which suggest multiple iterations of engaging narrative content. The figures in one Fire Painting may seem to be fleeing, while in another they can be seen as rushing towards a welcoming embrace; sometimes they seem to travel in darkness, at others, moving toward the light.

Fire painting 14.11.18, 2018, 15x22.5x2.5 inches, wood, fired ceramic & glass

More recent Fire Paintings have expanded upon the use of glass, thereby adding new narrative dimensions as well. For Moore, grids of glass rectangles suggest an urban cityscape, influenced by the Bauhaus office buildings on NYC's Park Avenue, north of Grand Central, where their windows glimmer in the afternoon sun. He sees other rectangular configurations as reminiscent of open books, perhaps imparting uplifting truths.

Moore's Open Form sculptures with their unique architecture of uprising curves, often holding in place a vertical pictorial slab, can be seen to express the limits of earthly existence in relation to the rising spiritual force of nature that Moore senses at the heart of our day-to-day reality. In one of these relatively small but powerful works entitled All Together, one side of the central slab seems to use the impressed stick figures to suggest an advancing army while the other side of the slab suggests the resulting carnage of the battlefield. Each side of the slab is connected to another slab beneath, angled outward to display a single figure appearing to represent one of the fallen combatants; a reminder perhaps, that the bell tolls for us all.

All Together 2022, 21.75x5x10 inches, Wood, Fired Ceramic

Moore's large-scale sculpture on a steel pedestal -- the sculpture and the pedestal together as one work -- entitled Injustice of Silence bears the striated marks of the 2 x 4 lumber which he used to pound its twisting and ascending form upwards. Stamps punctuate its surface, the letter forms silently intoning Children of Light. The square imprints of these letters also punctuate the surface of clay building blocks that were literally hurled by Moore at the emerging writhing shape. Working in this way is risky, there is no armature, the whole thing could have collapsed at any moment of misguided action. But there is no holding back this natural force of inspiration when it emerges in the work of an artist.

The large-scale sculptures have also evolved through Moore's openness to the unexpected.

Children of Light iv, 2017, 60.75x29x29inches, wood, fired ceramic & steel

The earlier pieces in this series such as Children of Light IV seem to suggest a monolithic presence. At one point however, in the drying process, one of these larger works cracked in half, which at first was disheartening to Moore, but then he realized new possibilities had literally been opened-up. In new works such as In Memory Of, the piece's interior hollowness thus revealed, suggested an emptiness imbued with formal and expressive possibilities. The cracked edges themselves added a naturally elegant linear topography while the walls of the interior space became a surface for the placement of impressed figures, evoking a dwelling, refuge, or perhaps a ceremonial site.

Moore believes his works are places of remembrance where multiplicities of associations take place. He notes that most recently these have been concerned with issues of the human condition. - Carl Van Brunt

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Mr. Van Brunt is an artist, writer and independent curator, the former owner of Van Brunt Gallery Beacon and Gallery Director of the Woodstock Artist Association and Museum.

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The Muse of Classic Greek Sculpture

Kathleen Cullen — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 21:27:18 +0000

The Muse of Classic Greek Sculpture Kathleen Cullen January 20, 2022 - 16:27

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The muse of classic sculpture at the Greek Consulate in New York seems to be working in unison with George Petrides' work uptown

Classical sculpture through the lens of sculptor George Petrides establishes a new vision in form and figure through juxtaposition of shape in a colorful palette. These sculptures are on view at the Consulate of Greece at 69 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10075 until February 3rd, 2022, weekdays from 9-2:30 pm. This show, which he shares with abstract painter Nassos Daphnis, is just the tip of his prolific artistic iceberg of work. He has been working on larger figures and the Hellenic Heads that are not part of this show but will be on view very soon. I’ve included photos of these pieces as well as his work in the current exhibition which presents tabletop size figures. In the installation, the figures quietly greet the audience in a half circle. The figures do not look at us. Their eyes are cast down. This had me recall a quote from Jean Genet speaking about the sculptural work of Giacometti "Figures they are familiar,… and yet they come from the depths of time, the origin of all things. In their sovereign immobility, they ceaselessly approach, but they do not look at us but allow us to gaze upon them."

In addition to being an incredibly visual storyteller, Petrides proves to be as good with words. I had the chance to talk with him at length and have enclosed sections of our discussion.

The muse of classic sculpture at the Greek Consulate seems like Kismet for your work. Can you talk about how the show came about?

The Greek Consulate in New York runs a wonderful arts exhibition program, where Greek and Greek-American artists show work in attractive rooms on the first floor and lower level of their gorgeous townhouse headquarters. I was very much looking forward to my show there opening on May 19, 2020…when, guess what happened? Yes, the Covid outbreak put a hold on the exhibition.

Fast forward nearly two years: the Consul General Mr. Koutras and Cultural Attache Ms. Kanellea were kind enough to offer me the space as the first event they hosted after Covid.

The pairing with Nassos Daphnis was proposed by curator Paul Laster. Paul has been friends for many years with Richard Taittinger, who took on the Nassos Daphnis estate in 2015. Paul proposed to pair nine of Daphnis's abstract paintings with nine of my figurative sculptures. Paul comments: "Taking a traditional approach to figurative sculpture, Petrides mines the past to create something new and when making his Pixel Fields/Aegean Series paintings, Daphnis tapped into new technology to update modernist abstraction. Petrides' sculpted figures are perceptively born from the primordial mud of ancient cultures and modified in the artist's hands, whereas Daphnis cleverly combined computer-generated graphics from an Atari ST with his own particular painting process."

Age of Innocence (Nicole), 2020 Natural clay, epoxy clay, metals, 38 cm high x 44 cm long

I believe the appeal to the Greek and Greek American communities is the story of two Greek-Americans. We were born 50 years apart (both Leos!) in Greece who came to New York at a young age and made art in this great city. But how the art differs!

What is your work seeking to convey?

I'm sharing my understanding of and my emotions about our fellow humans and of life. This is driven by my own interest in other people, in relationships with them, and (often) my inability to understand and connect with them. My self-portraits reflect my own challenges in life, and getting through them with some battering of the body and soul.

Because of the size of the space and the need to balance with the works of another artist, the works presented in the Consulate are smaller than my typical current work, for example the Hellenic Heads which are over lifesize heads that we will talk more about below.

You evolved into your artist life after many years in business. Why this transition? What inspired you?

I grew up in a family that was half artists (visual artists, musicians) and half business people. Even as a child it was clear to me that the life of the artist was not an easy one. Call it prescience, I hope we don't call it cowardice, after a liberal arts degree in 1985, I followed a business career. Then in 1996, the Muse beckoned and I started taking oil painting classes in the evenings and on weekends. I felt then as I do now that oil is not my medium! I looked for drawing classes and discovered that the New York Studio School, since its founding in the late 1950s, emphasizes drawing. Around 1998, I started with the Monday night drawing class and progressed to the famous Marathons under Graham Nickson: 10 days of drawing, some days more than 12 hours a day. At this point I have taken 6 or 7 marathons over two decades. So, NYSS has been my primary educational home for the last 20 years with side trips to the Art Students League and Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, where Giacometti, Bourgeois, Calder, Noguchi studied.

Boxer at Rest (Self Portrait), 2021 35+ Natural clay, epoxy clay, metals, patinas, brick 37 cm high x 27 cm diameter

What moved you to go from part-time art student to full time working artist?

I had been flirting with the commitment to be a full time working artist for many years but every time I came close to "pulling the trigger"...I didn't. Then in 2017, I experienced multiple deaths of friends and family -- these caused me to evaluate what I wanted to do with my remaining years on this orb. In early 2018 I left for Paris to spend 5 weeks drawing and painting at La Grande Chaumiere and when I returned…I was fully committed.

How important is art history to you? How did you acquire your knowledge?

Art history is very important to me. Knowing about figurative sculpture from the Mesopotamians and Egyptians through to Charlie Ray and Huma Bhaba is critical -- not because I make copies but because I believe all the prior investigations into figurative sculpture are of real interest.

I built my art history knowledge over the decades, starting as a kid. From age 3 to 7 my family lived in New York City. In those early years I recall my mother and her sister, who grew up in worn-torn Greece in the 1930s to 1950s, going to every museum in New York dragging me along. Back in Greece from age 10, I would tag along with another aunt who gave tours of Greek antiquities -- museums, archaeological sites. Then in college, art history classes: discovering painting, the Renaissance through to the Modern movement. In my twenties, art trips to Paris, Florence, Rome. In more recent years, I'm continuously looking at contemporary sculpture especially figurative -- for example, Ray, Bhabha, Houseago, Altmejd stand out for me.

Ajitto, 2022 20+ Bronze, custom patinas, 24 cm high x 22 cm diameter

You have reworked the surfaces of the sculptures, imbuing them with an expressionistic surface of dabs of color. Such additions are delicately applied, not as glaze as in most ceramic sculptures. Discuss?

I start with clay -- often with a life model posing -- to get the basic form and build the volumes. I fire it and then start going to work on it with power tools to subtract volume and epoxy clays to add volume -- in doing so I create a variegated, often rough surface that I don't plan in advance, nor does it have a specific rationale. Often I add more materials including found bricks, stone and wood, and ferrous and copper based metals, paints and acids. Sometimes I like the patches of color and material to be tonal -- other times for the contrasts to be stronger which can make the form "disintegrate". This part of my process is indeed expressionistic, and I keep reworking the pieces until they seem "done" to me.

Have you thought of placing yourself in the context of the ceramic world? There is a long tradition of figurative ceramic work.

Indeed, there is wonderful ceramic figurative work; Rodin's early work for Carrier-Belleuse comes to mind, as does current sculptor Rachel Kneebone's porcelain work. Personally, I don’t think of myself as a ceramicist because clay is only a part of my process, often the part I spend the least time on. I don't use glazes at all.

The work has elements of the ancient and modern. Is it inspiration or influence or both?

Both! I find my work can be categorized in a few different ways. Some works are inspired by the ancient Greek great works -- my version isn't a copy, rather an interpretation, using a live model and contemporary materials and my own expressionistic rendering. Similarly I have works that are interpretations of 19th and 20th sculpture, such as Rodin, Malliol, the Greek great Yannoulis Chalepas. Third, and the largest category, are my works from my daily life: from professional models, portraits of family members and self portraits. Does my daily life work show classical influences? Possibly

I've seen some of your larger works, specifically the monumental heads which you call Hellenic Heads. Discuss?

The Hellenic Heads series is important for me on many levels. I have chosen 7 key periods in Greek history, from 500 BC to the present, and researched them. I have responded to each period with over lifesize heads, often using members of my family as models. This multi-year project has allowed me to understand what historical and cultural influences have shaped me and other Greeks and Greek Americans. I believe that for any civilization that has persisted and developed over 3,000 years, it is helpful -- necessary -- to know what came before in order to understand today’s psychology.

Some of the heads refer to ancient times, such as the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Others to Byzantium and later to the Greek revolution against the Ottoman empire, starting in 1821. Another head draws from the Greek and Armenian Genocide of 1922, which my grandmother survived. Another head refers to the decade of the 1940s in Greece, where I have reflected on the experiences of my parents and other family who lived through the Nazi occupation. To end on a lighter note, for the head of current times, my daughter was patient to pose for me, symbolizing hope for a better future.

Can you comment on how over lifesize heads relate to your small figures?

Like many sculptors, I prefer to work large. I have done one over-lifesize full figure (DEISIS) and I'm happy with it! But working at that scale is difficult and expensive. So I use smaller sizes, often in the range of 18 inches plus or minus, to work out ideas. I'm in good company with Rodin, whose clay work was often in that size range and from which enlargements were made.

As to the importance of scale: Jeff Koons has said that scale changes the way the viewer perceives the work, even if it is the exact same work simply enlarged. I see how people react to my monumental heads, which I make in clay a little larger than lifesize -- and then enlarge digitally to almost 3 times lifesize.

The Sicilian (Paola), 2021 40+ Natural clay, epoxy clay, paint 40 cm high x 39 cm diameter done in NY studio with Life Model

What are you working on now?

Completing the 7 Hellenic Heads! I showed three in 2021, in Mykonos, Monaco and Dubai (and I showed 1 in London). Now I have two more almost done, and starting on the last two, to have the whole series ready for 2022 shows.

Where are you showing after your current show in New York closes on Feb 3rd?

For the rest of 2022, I plan to show in Washington DC, Southampton and Los Angeles, with a side trip to Mykonos for my third solo show there. In 2023 I hope to show in European venues including my hometown of Athens Greece.

Many of today's most successful artists share two characteristics with you. One is that they are prolific. The other is that they have good business sense. Please comment.

I think you are right about successful artists I know of. As to being prolific, I have a workmanlike ethic: on the days that I go to the studio, I'm often there at 8 AM and if possible work for 12 hours with no more than a 45 minute lunch break. So, I produce a lot of work. As to business sense: my background has helped me with the non-art making aspects of being an artist, such as financial arrangements, legal agreements -- but perhaps more importantly it gives a state of mind of being efficient, setting goals, seeking results.

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Thanks

Thank you Kathleen, you did a great job and conveying what I'm doing and trying to do! Best wishes for 2022.

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Sacred Sculptures

Webmaster — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 21:13:54 +0000

Sacred Sculptures Webmaster September 29, 2021 - 17:13

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Tony Moore: Sacred Structures

Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Kleinert/James Center for the Arts

Woodstock, New York

Through October 3, 2021

"Paddling" is a term used by ceramic artists referring to the gentle patting and shaping of malleable clay forms with flattened wooden tools. The six large ceramic sculptures by English-American artist Tony Moore centering the two person exhibition Sacred Structures, curated by Osi Audu and with photographs by Kenro Izu at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, were whacked into shape using a 2 x 4 piece of wood. Displacing the masses of the six four hundred and fifty pound lumps of clay that were beaten, wire-cut, and stamped into the pieces on view, was an immersive process for Moore; one of passion and discovery grounded in his awe of Nature, which he has come to experience as an all-encompassing reality. Made during the cauldron of events that was 2017, these are works that were ultimately brought to life in the elemental fire of Moore's hybrid Anagama-Noborigama wood-fire kiln. He came away with an injured shoulder and nine monuments (six of which are in this show) inspired by a quote from Martin Luther King: "Our generation will have to repent not only the words and acts of the children of darkness but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light."

Children of Light III 2017 (detail) Wood-fired ceramic, porcelain, steel, 62 ½’ x 29” x 29”

Monuments are typically larger than life and often commemorate heroes and achievements of the past. Moore's, which include steel pedestals of his own making, are scaled to human proportions and are, on one level, calls to action now. At the same time, the internal geometries of the formal elements of the finished pieces create relationships that intimate much larger structures. In them, viewers with creative imaginations will see huge natural and architectural configurations in their minds' eyes. There is an aura of timelessness emanating from these pieces summoning up echoes from the past... dwellings, hermit caves, ancient cultures and civilizations. Also summoned up are probing themes of evolution, justice, and the crises that currently face humanity.

Moore says that his approach to making this body of work was related to a seventeen year hiatus from sculpture beginning in the early 1980s when his creative focus was painting. Working on large canvasses on the floor, he came to view his paintings as "arenas of activity" where his art played itself out moment to moment. While the ongoing socio-political situation was an aspect of his awareness as he worked, many other factors entered in: personal history, prior works, and above all Nature, manifesting as growth, vitality, and energy as well as imagery.

Although his lengthy foray into painting was influenced by the sacred geometry of Newman and Rothko among others, his overriding goal has consistently been to supersede prior concepts and ways of expression. During his transitional period of the '80s and '90s, a new form of expression began to germinate -- one very much his own -- as Moore began seriously collecting ceramic art, eventually prompting a friend to ask, "What is this with you and clay?" One thing led to another and in 1997 he was offered a four and a half month ceramics residency at Byrdcliff. Having spent decades in the art world of Brooklyn, the experience was revelatory on many levels. Gone was the competitive, hustling environment of art in the city. Here was natural space, mind space, a supportive community, and the visceral process of sculpting with clay and fire.

While he was working his way through all this, Moore was also engaged in a psychological rite of passage, fending off depression and disillusionment through seeking wisdom and healing in Zen, Insight meditation, and various other therapies and disciplines. He states that from the beginning of his self-identification as an artist as a teenager to the present day, there has always been a spiritual dimension to his work. Though he earned a Masters Degree in Sculpture at Yale, and is well versed in art history, theory, and contemporary art developments, wrestling things out conceptually is only part of his practice; it is not the core. It is not unlike
the difference between being a scholar of spiritual traditions and an active practitioner who has internalized the essence of the teachings and put them into daily practice. He points out that ceramic art has its masters that pass down traditions. Moore has built upon and reinvigorated them to actualize his unique vision. So while Moore's sculptures can be decoded in various ways, they not only evoke but embody the trans-conceptual truths they convey. The artist's process is one of discovery rather than creation.

Injustice of Silence 2017 Wood-fired ceramic, porcelain, glass, steel 63” x 25” x 25”

Moore's piece "Injustice of Silence" bears the striated marks of the 2 x 4 which was used to pound its twisting and ascending form upwards. Stamps punctuate its surface, the letter forms silently intoning "Children of Light." The square imprints also punctuate the surface of clay building blocks that were literally hurled by the artist at the emerging writhing shape in a kind of madman's game of Jenga; the cubes and their message distorted in the energizing process. Working in this way is risky, there is no armature, the whole thing could have collapsed at any moment of misguided action. Yet Moore reports: that never happened.

Apparition 2017 Wood-fired ceramic, porcelain, glass, steel 60” x 29” x 29”

In another of the works in the show, entitled "Apparition," a reddish wave rises ominously above a small abstracted figure -- might it be a seal? Perhaps. The artist acknowledges the inevitability of visual associations while rejecting mimesis as limiting "ambiguity, aliveness, and engagement." The wave remains frozen in a moment of stasis, like the sculpture in its making, evoking the future forever emerging and calling on us to engage. - Carl Van Brunt

Mr. Van Brunt is a writer and independent curator, former owner of Van Brunt Gallery Beacon, and former gallery director of the Woodstock Artist Association and Museum.

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Tony Moore Sacred Structures

I’ve always found Tony Moore’s wood fired sculptures powerful on many levels, particularly on how they evoked the ancient.

But now with the war in Ukraine, his work takes on a terrifying prescience. They are no longer memories of ancient conflicts, they are the Now, not the Then.

The titles are also horrifyingly apt of the destruction of cities and lives of real towns and real men, women and children.

History always repeats.

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Physical Graffiti

Bradley Rubenstein — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 15:42:10 +0000

Physical Graffiti Bradley Rubenstein February 1, 2020 - 10:42

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Vanishing Point (Unifying Theory of Everything), 2019

Anna Ehrsam is a fine artist, patented inventor, and a professor of art history and studio art. Ehrsam is the Editor-in-Chief for Battery Journal and co-directs Park Place Gallery. She has also been involved in museum education and exhibition fabrication and design for over 20 years. A few of the museums she has created sculptural installations for include The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington DC National Mall; The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN; and The Smithsonian's American History Museum, Washington DC National Mall. Ehrsam is an internationally exhibiting artist. Her work is interdisciplinary involving new technologies and the development of a unified theory, as it relates to relational systems order theory. She is engaged in a rigorous exploration of new ideas, technology, and forms. The objective of her work is to expand the languages of form, color, light, sound, text, and context, using their intrinsic physical properties to make concrete and ephemeral phenomena, which she embodies in large sculpture, intimate artifacts, immersive installations, images, drawings, documents, and social sculpture. Her recent work captures manifestations of the physical and metaphysical by generating and embodying moments expressed in infinitely permutable forms, images, text, light, video, performance, and photography. Ehrsam makes videos, books, performances, photographs and experimental work with digital and analogue space. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Bradley Rubenstein: When I sat down to start thinking about your work for this talk, I realized it has been about 20 years that I have been following it. I knew you when you were in grad school, and if I remember correctly we used to run together sometimes. Somehow that seems to be a good place to start. The thing that strikes me most about your early work in performance and sculpture was the physicality of it—in the sense that a lot of your work deals with the body as a subject or field and also that much of your work was very labor-intensive.

Anna Ehrsam: Proving and testing myself with feats of mental and physical endurance have always been part of my work. My physicality gives me the ability to shape matter, words, stone, video, and performance in a way that allows me to network and flow through ideas and material without recognizing limits. I always push beyond in my effort to explore and understand something new.

Being, 1996, Plaster and Felt, 16 ’ x 12’ x 16'

BR: This was at a time when a lot of work being made was what Chuck Close called "Staples Art," meaning that New York was expensive, artists couldn't afford large studios, so there was a lot of Conceptual Art being made from office supplies.

AE: As an undergrad in NYC at SVA I studied with Lynda Benglis, Alice Aycock, Jackie Winsor, Roni Horn, May Stevens, art history with Donald Kuspit, and other great minds to whom I owe so much. Here I discovered performance, video art, and installation and created immersive works of art with a wide range of materials such as steal, plaster, mold-making, video, performance, installation, film, as well as directing. My desire to create immersive works of art in the form of large installations was an attempt to make hermetic alternative realities for myself and others to explore. My work posed an alternative that questioned the collective cultural assumptions about gender, race, class, and power in a political and social context. I focused on issues of power and domination and the inequalities and cultural ills that I witnessed. My body is my primary tool in all of my existential and phenomenological experiments. I set up ways of exploring the physical world and embodying that exploration in the way that best suits the idea. I feel it is the artist's job to train and tune their sensory apparatus to facilitate the fullest perception, reception, and transmission of their experiential relatives in all of its subjective, object, and metaphysical complexity. Artscience is a way of exploring with an arsenal of tools, technology and methodology that allows for the fullest range of possibilities and a distinctly existential way of being, acting, and becoming through conscious self-making.

BR: And before that...

AE: I was an only child who successfully passed as a boy for years. Gender and identity politics are a part of my work. Gender is enculturated and is toxic for both males and females in this culture and at large. We need new behavioral models that allow for the expression of a much more nuanced and healthy form of gender expression and fluidity. I saw clearly the pervasive cultural inequalities of sexism, racism, and classism rampant in our culture of perpetual war. This bigotry was hostile, as was the cultural climate, and I saw these influences as they were enacted by children at play on the playground. Just as I fought to defend kids on the playground from bigotry and bullies as a child, I fight today to defend against the repressive forces in culture that plague society. The playground has changed to a global field of injustice, corruption, ignorance, and war, but my mission to bring about change in the world and help overcome the injustices remains. Through education, art, and technology I strive to enact positive cultural change.

My countercultural upbringing gives me a unique cultural perspective as an outsider. As a child I perceived the adult hegemony as largely untrustworthy because they had clearly fucked up the world so royally. I knew at that time I needed to help change culture and vowed to be a champion for the underdog. I perceived the systemic, enculturated sexism, misogyny, and violence against girls, women, boys, and men as intolerably evil, and I vowed to fight back with all of my might.

Infinite Body, 2010 , Plaster, 9’ x 3’ x 2’  

I grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, a progressive international college town where Indiana University is located. Bloomington was a cultural mecca; I was surrounded by artists, intellectuals, and an international academic community. Without a TV or computer I was engaged in deep, durational thought and exploration of my surroundings in a quiet, contemplative, and complex way. Immersed in this radical countercultural environment of artists, musicians, and intellectuals, during a time of social and political unrest and foment, I was often left to my own devices, necessitating that I invent things, draw, build, even make earth works, and construct new narratives. The forest was one of my classrooms. This shaped me in important ways. I spent my time roaming the woods with my dogs, communing with trees, nature, animals, minding my mind. All the while I was painfully aware of the threat of imminent Nuclear Armageddon and perpetual war. But my world was full of art, nature, animals, peace, love, and harmony in a community of artist intellectual hippies. I lived communally with other kids and parents for a time The adults started a daycare and a school, which is still going strong with kindergarten through twelfth grade under one roof. It's called Harmony School. I was distinctly aware of the cultural and institutional ills of the day, most of which still persist. My artwork stems from a desire to bring about cultural change.

I went to Yale for graduate school where I received my MFA and studied with the brilliant art historian and artist Johanna Drucker, along with many great artists such as Richard Serra, Nayland Blake, Jessica Stockholder, Ron Jones, and John Newman. At Yale I continued my performance, video, sculpture, and installation work. I was in Yale University's first video class, taught by Carol Scully the protege of Ken Burns, both of whom are visionary documentarians. Strangely, this pioneering class was held in the video conferencing rooms for the medical school. During my time at Yale I made several monumental works concerning institutional critique, using my body, large architectonic sculpture, video installation, and performance to explore the nature of space, architecture, and ideology. This was institutional and cultural critique from the inside of the ultra-elite bastions of power. I focused on deconstructing ideological structures, rites, rituals, and power relationships using my body as the interlocutor. I moved back to New York City after graduating with an MFA from Yale University and embarked on a large collaborative project with a fellow Yale graduate.

BR: When you did move to New York, you and your partner at that time were collaborating a lot. I remember your big studio building in Long Island City that was like a giant installation. There was a piece you did that I saw at Exit Art, a large morphing thing, that very presciently used the World Trade towers as imagery.

Joint, 2011, Steal, Magnets, 12’’ x 16” x 12’

AE: I make multidisciplinary complexes, connections, and ideas embodied in installations, sculpture, video, as well as cultural documents. Working with a variety of materials and technologies, I created networks across disciplines to manifest the most stimulating and rewarding experiences, while learning as much as I could about all manner of materials, techniques, and disciplines such as art history, art and cultural theory, physics, materials science, and process. If I'm not making art for myself, other artists, or museums, I am reading, going to art exhibitions, or engaged in discourse about art, culture, and politics with other artists. It was an intense immersion and an invaluable period for me as a developing artist. My early work in NYC was largely based on social political issues of power and domination. I was reading Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Rosalind Krauss, Lynda Nochlin, and Donna Haraway, among others.

The body is imprinted and imposed upon by culture; we become gender labeled, classified, and commodified. We need new models of gender performativity and new relationships to nature and power structures. The landscape contains the idea of freedom and openness, yet it is cultivated, circumscribed, colonized, bought and sold, commodified, and exploited. My sculpture is about body as it relates to landscape, architecture, culture, and power. We are all increasingly cyborgian and have bodies without borders. In terms of physics we are all connected in an infinite web of vibrating strings, exchanging molecules with each other all the time. We are all one organism and part of the same ecosphere. We need new narratives, language, and behavior -- and new ways of being in harmony with nature, animals, each other, and our environment. I am working on an app for conservation biology and ecology called Humanimal, which will promote health and wellness for humans, animals, and the planet.

BR: I have always made a distinction between experimentation in art and demonstration. There are a lot of artists who do their homework and then create things that pretty much look like homework. To experiment means you are manifesting your ideas in a material way, which sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t, but requires a greater degree of risk. Both kinds of work can produce interesting results, though. An aspect of your practice does involve pedagogical sculpture, work that has specific parameters. Can you talk about how that plays out in your work as a whole -- does that influence you at all? Joseph Beuys and Hans Hofmann come to mind as ones who synthesize their practice.

Hyper Object, 2018, Mixed Material, 22” x 22’’

AE: I am pleased you asked this question. Pedagogy and social justice are deeply embedded in my work and life. I have been a teacher for 20 years with a mission to encourage social activism and critical thinking. As for social sculpture, I have created an art and cultural journal to give a context to my fellow artists and cultural producers. It is important to me to make art that has the power to expand consciousness and promote equality and cultural change. In addition to teaching and art making, I expanded my art scholarship and radical pedagogy beyond the realm of text into a living dialogue with cultural producers. I am also co-founder of Park Place Gallery, where I host and curate exhibitions that promote art, science, and technology in the service of ecology. Art is the heart, soul, and intellect of a culture, and I believe as an artist and educator it is my mission to empower others by promoting critical thinking and creative problem solving in the service of conservation, biology, and equality.

BR: So, much of your recent work explores art, science, and perception. It seems like you have moved away from that physicality in your work and maybe on to something more abstract.

AE: The body's sensory apparatus and physical phenomena have always interested me and inspired me to invent and explore new ways to experience the world, using my body as a vehicle. My interest in physics, science, technology, and my patent work are all part of my exploration of the world.

BR: You are also involved in projects with your work in education and environmental issues. At first these might seem outside of your sculptural work, but I was thinking about Beuys and his idea of a social sculpture. Do you see it the same way in your practice?

Being, 1996, Plaster, felt, and performance

AE: I believe artists, innovators, inventors, educators, and free thinkers can change the world by presenting radical alternatives to current repressive paradigms and systems, like capitalism, sexism, and racism. I implement a radical pedagogy that interrogates the repressive ideological systems of power, domination, and control. These systems are embedded in culture and inculcated and normalized in the body politic; these repressive systems and norms are accepted as reality. My students accept these repressive socio-political economic systems and conditions as natural because they have not been taught to question authority or the norm. I use art, cultural theory, and art history to present new narratives and possibilities. I show them that language itself is plastic and malleable and that they can control it and shift ideas and outcomes to create new ideas, forms, and meaning. I teach my students to question and interrogate authority through creative thinking and problem solving, and they learn to imagine new self-empowering forms, narratives, and language, which they embody.

Art is the most fundamentally important tool for expanding consciousness and shaping intellectual growth. Through teaching I help shape, guide, and change people's lives. We could classify my creative endeavors as political art, activism, or even social sculpture. In this sense my work is engaged in a relational way with culture shifting and social praxis. Through my cultural production and mentorship I endeavor to promote change on a daily basis.

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Marini’s Magic

Dom Lombardi — Sun, 08 Dec 2019 22:21:58 +0000

Marini’s Magic Dom Lombardi December 8, 2019 - 17:21

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Photo: Dario Lasagni

Marino Marini: Arcadian Nudes

Center for Italian Modern Art, NYC

A lot has been written and said about the art of Marino Marini (1901-1980). For me, his most emblematic subject: a heroic or happy male figure atop an equally confident horse always felt like a symbolic bridge between the modes of a vaunted past and the precariousness or promise of the present. Before visiting this exhibition, I was much less aware of his female nudes that were produced between 1932 and 1949, many of which are here, placed beautifully in a well designed and very inviting environment.

In contemplating these works, one must consider the state and fate of Europe between 1932 and 1949. In addition, Marini was not poor, far from it. This was how he was able to produce so much work in various media including life-sized bronzes. With all this considered, it is plain to see just how accomplished Marini was with his craft and aesthetic. There is something that I feel here, that I can only describe as truthful beauty as I walk amongst his works. And unlike the man and horse series, there is almost no whimsy present, save for the one reclining sculpture that appears to be somewhat playful. It is quite amazing, how Marini references the classics in art, while he blends in the contemporary; or how he selectively causes havoc with the surfaces of his sculptures by adding or etching in texture by smoothing out or digging into his various chosen materials. However, it is most of all, the way in which he carefully and intimately addresses his audience through his subjects -- that is the real magic of Marini.

Susanna, 1943, cast 1946-51, Bronze, 28 7/8 x 21 1/8 x 10 5/8" , 68 lb , Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn 1966, Photo: Lee Stalsworth

And there is another very odd feeling I am experiencing -- it is as if some of the sculptures are casting a mild spell on me. And that is strange, because the least representational elements of all the work is often the rather stylized facial features, while the bodies in general, are far more naturalistic and unimposing as you can see in Marini's Susanna (1943) (on loan from the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden), or Figura Seduta (Seated Figure) (1944). And this is key to his intention, the naturalism of the bodies, how familiar they look -- it is almost like one feels a personal relationship with the "person" Marini is placing in front of you. The naturalism is even more apparent in the seated figures, where tummies are not tucked in, and excess weight is, in various degrees, allowed to gather in the midsections, while the poses of many of the works are not so "posed" -- these are the strongest elements of the modern side of his thinking.

Giovinetta (Young Lady), 1938, gesso, 61 13/16 x 18 29/32 x 14 9/16", Fondazione Marino Marini - Pistoia

As I alluded to earlier, there is always that sense of a nod to the past in these works, perhaps as far back as the Greco-Roman age as evidenced in the subtle sway of the hips, the confident stare in the faces or the "eroded" surfaces and missing arms and heads. What we do not see here from the ancients is the royalty, the implied greatness of the subject in terms of collective, compiled history. In its place, what remains so clearly in these sculptures, is the presence of the subject's soul. All of the works have an unmistakable timeless essence that we all now, fortunately, can fully appreciate and enjoy, as each work breaks the plane between the day they were created to the moments of engagement today, entering our lives, forever present in our minds and memory.

Marino Marini: Arcadian Nudes runs through the 13^th of June, 2020. The Center for Italian Modern Art is located at 421 Broome Street (4^th floor) in New York City.

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The Rube Is On

Dom Lombardi — Sat, 16 Nov 2019 02:44:18 +0000

The Rube Is On Dom Lombardi November 15, 2019 - 21:44

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The Art of Rube Goldberg, Queens Museum, (l-r) Charles Kochman, Jennifer George & Creighton Michael

The Art of Rube Goldberg

Queens Museum

Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, New York

Rube Goldberg defied the odds. He was a highly paid and award-winning artist at a time most such practitioners were living hand to mouth. He collapsed the cavernous divide between illustrative or commercial art and fine art with a popular, albeit wildly witty vision. He bridged the gap between engineering and fine art in a way that was both compelling and entertaining to his audience, by inventing compellingly impractical machines to complete mundane tasks. And he eventually became a spokesperson for a number of products such as Luck Strike Cigarettes (Goldberg only smoked cigars) and Old Angus scotch whiskey.

Goldberg created some 50,000 works, mostly on paper that were drawn or painted with black ink. You don’t often hear of such a staggering output of work. Myself, I can only think of Picasso, who too amassed such a number, which included paintings, sculptures, collages, prints, ceramics and textiles. And it is also important to note that their eras overlapped: Picasso 1881-1973, Goldberg 1883-1970, while both were the greatest, most recognizable figures of their related fields.

Foolish Questions Postcards (1910), color postcards, 3 ½ x 5 ½ inches, Courtesy of the Queens Museum

Picasso's legacy can be found in every important museum in the world, or in any volume of Modern Art. Goldberg’s legacy lives largely in the memories and minds of artists, engineers and inventors, people who see the beauty in belaboring a simple task creatively, by employing endless ingenuity. In fact, Rube Goldberg is listed as an adjective in Miriam-Webster's Dictionary, and there is something called the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, a national competition that occurs every year. In it, six finalists from various colleges and universities compete as they conceive of, design and build machines that turn an everyday task into dozens of otherwise frivolous actions that, when occurring in a crazy continuum of wiggles, waves and whirligigs, completes a uncomplicated task that would normally take a person one or two trouble-free movements or moments to achieve.

My renewed enthusiasm in Rube Goldberg's legacy all comes from a recent talk and exhibition I attended at the Queens Museum, which was aptly titled The Art of Rube Goldberg. Conceived of by artist Creighton Michael, curated by the Senior Curator of the Aspen Art Museum, Max Weintraub, and toured by International Arts & Artists, The Art of Rube Goldberg stands as a glowing reminder of just how influential Goldberg was in his day. Like some, I am most familiar with his mesmerizing machines, and was pleased to learn of and see more of his voluminous cartoons and strips that had a distinctive, modern (for its time) and very humorous look at social behavior, human and personified animal mannerisms and all the trials and tendencies we project in terms of class, gender, religion and most importantly relaxation.

Confessions of Confirmed Golf Addicts (1919), ink on Paper, 31 ½ x 26 inches, Courtesy of the Queens Museum

The talk consisted of two presentations. The first was by Jennifer George (Fashion Designer and the artist’s granddaughter, and author of the book, The Art of Rube Goldberg), and Charles Kochman (editorial director of Abrams ComicArts and editor of the book). Both highlighted Goldberg’s education as an engineer, his life as a father and grandfather, and his continued creative influences, which are far-reaching, sometimes anecdotal, and always cross-cultural. The second overview of Goldberg was given by Creighton Michael, with his thoughts of Goldberg's relationship to key art historical figures, pointing to Da Vinci's caricatures that focused on harsh, distorted facial features of everyday people; and Peter Bruegel the Elder’s powerful storytelling ability.

Looking forward from Goldberg's influences, I noticed one link between he and Robert Crumb. Not so much in the content, of course, but more so in the absurd levels of social interactions. Crumb does credit Goldberg, among many others of those early cartoonists as influences, and I believe you can see it most easily in works from the incredibly popular, and always stinging and zinging retorts in his Foolish Questions series (1909-1934), or in the wildly reactive fantastical fashion fiasco in Men in Hats at Theater (1926).

Men in Hats at Theater (1926), ink on paper, 31 1/2 x 26 1/8 inches, Courtesy of the Queens Museum

Then there are the many thousands of cartoons Goldberg created that truly defined an awkward era, revealing a magical mindset that only he could portray. In addition, Goldberg was awarded a Pulitzer in 1948 for his political cartoons, some of which are in the exhibition. The most powerful and timeless work is Jews and Arabs (1947), which depicts two lone figures crossing an endless dessert in parallel paths that one must assume have been forged by generation after generation. The irony here is they are headed in the same direction, unaware of each other's presence despite their relatively close proximity. Profoundly, Goldberg is pointing out both the differences and similarities of the two peoples traveling roads that unfortunately, may never meet.

Goldberg also had a postage stamp created in his honor; a color version of one of his most familiar works, Professor Butts and His Self-Operating Napkin (1931). The stamp was issued in 1995, while the original work can be credited in influencing Charlie Chaplin’s great film Modern Times (1936), which features a self-operating napkin machine.

Rube Goldberg Inventions United States Postal Service Stamp (included on sheet of "Comic Classics" stamps) (1995), 7 ⅞ x 7 7/16

And those machines, oh those machines. They were, and still are transfixing to me, especially the ones that are considered "wearable". For instance, Professor Invention Drawing (An Idea to Keep you from Forgetting Your Wife's Letter) (1930) shows a man who is just about to pass a letter box, as a device he is wearing strapped to his waist goes through over a dozen key points or movements to remind him to mail a letter his wife gave him. What really rings true here is the nod to human nature, how we tend to daydream. Getting lost in one's thoughts, how one forgets what they set out to do as they move from place to place with intended goals, big and small is something anyone can relate to.

Goldberg continues to turn minutia into magic with Professor Butts Invention Drawing (Postage Stamps) (1929) that, using various sounds in a mix of progressively bizarre mechanisms, places a moistened stamp on a letter. In this instance, as Creighton Michael pointed out in his presentation, Goldberg utilizes diagonal forces to enhance the movements, while the contrasting dark sides of the two desks helps to both move the eye and create depth.

Professor Butts Invention Drawing (Postage Stamps), 1929, ink on paper, 14 ¾ x 25 ⅝ inches, Courtesy of Queens museum

The Art of Rube Goldberg at the Queens Museum, which also includes film shorts produced by Goldberg, videos of the influences of Goldberg, games, functional objects, books, strips, play money, advertisements, illustrated articles, and archival film clips, and photographs runs through February 9^th, 2020. Be sure to see it, and the other wonderful exhibitions the museum offers.

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Beyond The Surreal

Mary Hrbacek — Sun, 17 Jun 2018 14:00:00 +0000

Beyond The Surreal Mary Hrbacek June 17, 2018 - 10:00

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Giacometti

Guggenheim Museum, NYC

June 8 - September 12, 2018

The meticulously curated Giacometti exhibition on view at the Guggenheim Museum spans the artist's early years during his involvement with the Surrealist group (1920s) through his later period when he became associated with the French Existentialist movement in the 1940s. The exhibition is organized by Megan Fontanella, Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Catherine Grenier, Director, Fondation Giacometti, Mathilde Lecuyer-Maillé, Associate Curator, Fondation Giacometti, and Samantha Small, Curatorial Assistant, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Alberto Giacometti is thought in many quarters to be the epitome of what has come to be considered a "fine artist." His practice is highly focused and selective, extremely decisive yet open to the messages his subjects transmitted to him. One might infer, based on the intensity and angst of his art, that Giacometti was a loner, someone who was prey to anxiety and strain; yet in fact it seems the he was socially connected with friends he saw regularly, he was a married man, and he was an artist who worked diligently in his studio, often into the depths of the night, habitually from a model.

That Giacometti's art is unique and insightful is well established; he gained inspiration from the art of Oceania, Egyptian art, Cycladic art and the art of Africa. It is possible that he was inspired by the physical stature of the Watutsi tribe of Africa that bears a strong resemblance to the artist's fragile, slender "walking" and "standing" man images. His bond with Egyptian art brings a special emphasis and spirit of the divine to his artwork. His "Standing Man" bronzes, attenuated into apparently tormented refashioned forms, appear free of all but vital, enduring elongated spirit. An inventive diversity of scale plays an important part in his art; some of the heads are very small, bordering on the minute, while other standing figures, legs fused into one form, present themselves as much more statuesque than their actual height implies. The power of the pale plaster pieces is relatively diluted compared with the impact of the regal black bronze works. The artist was drawn to the teeming energy generated in city squares; his figures walking through plazas seem optimistic and purposeful as they pass close by one another, free of distracting concerns of the moment. Giacometti's compelling series of maimed broken busts, with forms cut at the shoulders, all have heads that resemble regenerated tribesmen who have endured the ordeal of a rite of passage. With some exceptions, Giacometti's art encapsulates the post-war era of fear, in which the planet was threatened by the prospect of a nuclear holocaust.

The revealing documentary film on view, by Ernst Scheidegger, features Giacometti in his studio as he works from a model before public scrutiny; his art revolves ostensibly around the theme of visual perception. In his practice he tries adamantly to reproduce the entire subject faithfully, but the more scrutinizing he becomes, the more impossible it is for him to capture the figure in its entirety, true to its visual scale. The torso may become massive in relation to a head, which has become increasingly flat in front but wide to the side. He works obsessively with the goal of total truth in the rendering of his models. Through his probing, deliberate and searing search for perceptual authenticity, he finds a working method that enables him to achieve a result that replicates the process of the strengthening of the spirit that is at the core of earthly existence.

Giacometti's genuine subjects are bodily pain and endurance. The artist requires absolute stillness from his sitters, sometimes for five hours at a stretch, in a working mode whose fierceness seems to become an integral part of the final artwork, as he searches for something beyond physical matter. The film discloses that he feels the eyes to be the only aspect of the model that truly speaks of reality and are as such the dominating part of the subject's personality. The artist seeks something well beyond a resemblance; he is after universality common to all humankind. This universality comprises the need in life to endure pain and suffering, but to bear it as part of the higher plan. Some believe that our human spirits are honed by hardship in readiness to meet our maker in life’s non-physical phase of existence.

Giacometti puts his materials, his clay, through tremendous paces (as seen in the film) by reworking and remodeling the shapes and contours, cutting repeatedly into the grooves and curves to make the energetic marks reach deep into the soft clay to bring the forms to their essence. He impersonates God in his studio, capturing in the expressions of his models' faces the aches and physical tension of endurance that sharpen and strengthen the spirit. Often the discomfort that the models' features exude supersedes the appearance of their physical traits, so that all his models have a similar attitude and energetic dispersion of their pain and perseverance.

Giacometti reproduces the sculptural stance of the Egyptian god kings by melding his statues' legs and feet into one form, infusing an aura of the divine in his standing figures. He prepares his material, reworking his sculptures, as one can perhaps imagine the priests within the innermost chamber of the pyramids prepared the pharaoh’s body for its ultimate transcendence to the afterlife.

The artist's connection with the Existentialists (he was a friend of Jean Paul Sartre) brought a heightened awareness that humans exist on the edge of belief, shifting from being into a lack of being, or a void of nothingness. He sought in his work to counter this void by extracting from his model the essential battered, shattered individual spirit, refashioning it in clay to its tormented but new form.

The exhibition is admirably curated, providing spare informative wall texts that do not convey overly esoteric content. It is focused, clear and comprehensible to the informed public at large, placing this art in a transparent context. The show brings to light the surprising information that this ambitious yet humble man believed he was never able to accurately achieve his intensions in his work. To consider "deconstructing" an artist of such a specific and personal focus would be not only inflated, it would be an act of undue hubris. This exhibition demonstrates the authentic expressions of a totally honest, profoundly driven 20^th century icon of anxiety and truth.

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The Return of a Shape Shifter

David Carbone — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 09:22:33 +0000

The Return of a Shape Shifter David Carbone June 6, 2014 - 05:22

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Domenique Lévy and Emmanuel Perrotin have collaborated on presenting a survey of figurative sculptures by Germaine Richier, who Lévy, -- in perhaps, overly bold rhetoric -- claims to have been "the mother of post war sculpture in Europe."

It has been fifty seven years since her first one person show in New York at the Martha Jackson Gallery. Hardly a forgotten figure in France and Europe, during her lifetime she was in five consecutive Venice Biennales, and in recent decades her work has been seen in major surveys of the period: Paris-Paris (1981) at the Centre Pompidou, Aftermath (1982) at the Barbican Art Gallery, Paris Post War (1993) at the Tate Gallery and a retrospective at the Foundation Maeght, Saint-Paul (1996), followed by another at the Academie der Kunst in Berlin (1997). In America, she fell from sight after her untimely death in 1959. The exhibition is on three floors of the two galleries 73th street townhouse. The first floor is overfilled with large pieces; the second is just right; and the third floor holds only a few works which share the space with Gutai artist, Tsuyoshi Maekawa's disappointing variations on Alberto Burri's burlap reliefs. (What were they thinking?)

Apparently, the intensely scarified expressionist surfaces of her work were well known long before Giacometti's wizened figures appeared in his first post-war show in Paris (1951). Still, today Giacometti holds the laurels for the existential desiccation of the human figure, so are we to be as negative as Roberta Smith was in her Times review? Is it just about promotion, "loyalty" to retro media -- bronze and sentimental melodrama? If Giacometti's expressionist adaptation of Rodin's impressionistic use of lights and shadows obsesses on the impossibility of seeing / knowing the "other" and his constant necessity to try; Richier's attenuated proportions and gestures, her use of grafting natural and found forms into clay figures to produce hybrid plant-animal personages seeks to reveal the instinctive nature of the ever shape-shifting inner self. These superficially related artists couldn't be more different.

I came to the exhibition after seeing the Chiem/Reid exhibition of bronzes by Gaston Lachaise and Louise Bourgeois at the 69th Street Amory. Both of these artists followed their creative demon which caused metamorphic transformations of the human form into concrete emblems of the generative female force in one and the predatory spider-self in the other: both could be said to be mawkish or merely aspects of late surrealism, as in the equally transformative work of Lucas Samaras, whose Polaroids were the most dazzling works in the current ICP's exhibition. For this reviewer, it was hard not to imagine Bourgeois looking back to Richier/s ant woman, "La Fourmi," of 1953, among other works, in much the same way Sigmar Polke or David Salle looked back to Francis Picabia.

Further reflection revealed complex relations with other contemporary European artists. In comparison with the perforations in Richier's "La Chauve-souris," of 1946, or "La Cigale," of 1954-55, or "Le Berger des Landes," of 1951, Lucio Fontana's signature "holes and penetrations" look wearisome. Her bizarrely textured earth spirits, "Plomb avec verre de couleur" from 1952 and another of 1953 seem to precede similar "texturologic" figures by Dubuffet of several years later and hold up well against them. Her metamorphic hybrid figures hold a lively dialogue with contemporary work by Picasso, Miro, and Ernst and have a similar range between success and sentimentality. The single naturalistic bust, "La Chinoise" of 1952, is full of grace and stands with the best portraiture of Marino Marini. Richier's experiments with color came late in her short career and "Le Couple" of 1959 and "Le Menhir peint, sur équerre ardoise," of 1959, show its promise; looking at Brassai's photos of the more animated painted plasters, from "L'Echiquier" also of 1959, made me wish they were on show in place of the whimsical divinatory figures in dark patina.

Indeed this body of work signals something oddly familiar among younger contemporary artists. Both Kiki Smith and Bruce Gagnier have revived the expressionist figure in bronze; and Ruth Marten and JoAnne Carson have in their own way cultivated new gardens of hybrid figurations. The art world has become increasingly global, presenting alternate Modernisms where the present changes perceptions of the past and the past continues to change the present: nothing stays quite the same. - David Carbone

(Photos courtesy of Dominique Lévy Gallery; image above left L'Eau, 1953-1954.)

Mr. Carbone is a painter, a critic, a curator and an educator. He has shown nationally in galleries and museums; written for Modern Painters and The Sienese Shredder anthologies, among other publications; occasionally appeared on NPR's Morning Edition with David D'Arcy between 1992-2005; and curated selected retrospectives. He is currently the director of graduate studies in studio arts at the University at Albany, where he teaches painting.

From Russia, With Love

Steve Holtje — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:07:59 +0000

From Russia, With Love Steve Holtje December 6, 2012 - 10:07

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Arcady Kotler: Sculpting the Void

Able Fine Art Gallery, NYC

Innovative artist Arcady Kotler is not associated with any particular creed, religion, or tradition, but excludes none. At the core of his works lies a profound sense of intimacy that hopefully initiates a dialog, for which the artist always longs. Kotler's work presents the evolution of a concept bearing form: from elaborately adorned yet impeccably harmonious ("Clothed Maja") to minimalist, with a strong reference to Russian supremacy; in "The Red Square" [left], the rigid geometry of a square intrudes on the organic form of the intentionally excessively decorated Russian nesting doll. It feels as if complexity has reached its limit and collapsed into the simplicity of the red square.

A matryoshka is a traditional Russian toy, the skill level of which rests on the number of nesting dolls it consists of. The last and smallest doll of Arcady's matryotshka is not hollow. It is solid. The artist refers to this as a point of singularity. His matryoshka is infinite. Cross-sectioned by a square, it allows an imaginary "zoomed" view inside, towards an ephemeral point of singularity, where nonexistence becomes reality, where matter is reborn.

Why does the artist choose to gold plate his work? Does this not contradict the idea expressed in his artist statement: "I'm drawn to lightweight and widely available materials of negligible value"? It still holds true. The gold serves the purpose of acknowledging Kotler's Russian heritage. The associative sequence could be the following: just as the tolling, an acoustic climax of transcendence, is born of a cathedral's golden dome, the red square, a visual realization of such, emerges out of the golden dome-shaped womb of the matryoshka.

Another perspective for using gold could also be offered. If we step aside and look at Arcady Kotler's exhibition as a whole, a parallel can be drawn between the assembling of the works, arranging the space, and building a temple. A massive wooden skeleton -- the base of construction, white stucco or alabaster -- its body, and finally the golden finish of the dome; every material is present to establish and support a beautiful and harmonious structure.

It is not a stretch to say that, surrounded by the artist's works, one can experience a sense of spiritual elevation and conscious awareness reminiscent of being in a temple. Consciousness manifested through matter is a motif in his art. The artist dwells on the symbolism of the shapes, such as a square and a circle. A white circular puzzle is as perfect as it is fragile. It cannot be reassembled once destroyed; it's symbolic of the preciousness and fragility of life.

Another circle is "Sewer," made out of sugar cubes. This is how the artist explains the concept behind this work: "I contemplate my cube as innate knowledge of a perfect form with negligible entropy. Man-constructed reality is a world of straight angle structures that help sustain life and shelter us from entropy. They mimic the rigid geometry of an ideal crystal. A round sewer is a gate to the world of decay, decomposition and disintegration where entropy takes over.

"I have chosen a sugar cube as a structural unit for the sewer because it possesses a certain duality: it is a man made material that reflects the building block of an urban landscape. Yet it is designed to quickly dissolve and disintegrate with entropic quality inbuilt and reinforced in it."

Kotler's sculpting medium is dictated by the concept, or as in "Sugar Mine," the medium itself becomes the object of art. He displays an enormous sugar rock, puzzling the viewers by its origin and artificiality. The artist suggests an unusual point of view on the artificial versus the natural. In totality, all matter is shaped by universal laws or consciousness. Consciousness, manifested through human form, shapes matter "artificially." At the end, though, the essence of humanity lies within the realm of the "natural," and regardless of its seemingly destructive or even self-destructive nature, the big picture still looks as bright as a huge, sweet, and shiny sugar rock!

Similar in optimistic perception of the art work, the following poem, cheerfully recited by an eccentrically looking kid at the exhibition, is published below with his permission:

Sugar Mine, Sugar Mine,

Sliding down a sugar mine,

Breaking with my tongue

And taste

Bloody sugar, sweeten blood…

Another crowd-gathering piece is the cube-shaped "Flat Tire," the popularity of which is explained by the element of surprise and its rather dominant, space-claiming appearance. Some peculiar play on abbreviations, such as Dual Meaning Tire or DMT or Dimethyltryptamine (a powerful chemical naturally occurring in humans), comes to mind when describing this work. Just as DMT alters one's consciousness and the perception of reality, the square tire, with its essential dynamic quality removed, suggests the transcendence of consciousness into the state of stillness and clarity.

The works made of rope are objects from childhood. They bring feelings of vulnerability and intimacy to the scene. The artist tries to prolong the moment of fragile balance of the swings and a jump rope between ascending and descending, symbolic of transcendence between existence and non-existence, chaos and zero entropy, spacelessness, oblivion, and ultimate clarity.

The opening of Arcady’s exhibition was postponed by Hurricane Sandy. Sandy gave a new meaning to the name of the show, Sculpting the Void. Was the artist sculpting the void left in people’s minds and lives by the terrifying winds and waves? Was he channeling the forces of rebirth? What can be concluded with confidence is that the timeless content of Kotler’s works allows them to withstand the challenge of being viewed through the prism of a disaster's aftermath and perceived as art of great significance.

Naked

Bradley Rubenstein — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:11:23 +0000

Naked Bradley Rubenstein December 14, 2011 - 08:11

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Edgar Degas: Degas and the Nude

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Through February 5, 2012

Of all the artists who came to be known as Impressionists, with their emphasis on the effects of light and color -- plein air painting -- and focus on outdoor motifs, it was Edgar Degas who held onto the tradition of the figure as both subject and inspiration. In this aspect of his work he was, in some ways, the last artist of his generation to incorporate the long-standing belief that the depiction of people, whether heroic, iconic, or merely quotidian, was the noblest achievement of a painter.

When asked why he painted the ballet, Degas said, "Because it is all that is left us of the combined movement of the Greeks." This justification is what one would expect, based on his unwavering interest in the subject of the figure. Degas could see a Venus or Nike adjusting a sandal in the ballerina fixing a slipper ("Dancer Looking at the Sole of her Right Foot" [1896–1911], shown at left). Similarly, in 1856 he saw the Parthenon figures and Attic vase painting and translated those into images of the dancer Eugénie Fiocre. Like the Greeks, he believed in the primacy of the human form as the wellspring of art. His "Scene of War in the Middle Ages" (1863-65) and "Young Spartans Exercising" (1860-62) drew their compositions from Greek histories.

Degas's painting methods embraced some of the exacting disciplines of the ballet; he often mimicked the movements and positions of his models in the studio as he worked, as if rehearsing for a performance himself. The impact of his work may be diminished with the passing of time (not to mention the countless museum gift shop calendar reproductions), and the modern viewer may miss some important details, having become too familiar with the pictures. At the time he was making them, however, reviews mentioned his "extraordinary alertness to common and unidealized fact" and his "vulgar awkwardness about some of the pink legs...scantily endowed with beauty."

In After the Bath (Woman Drying Herself) (1896) [right] with its suggestion of Rubens's"Diana" or Rembrandt's "Bathsheba," Degas updated the genre of the bather by painting working-class women (read: dancers and prostitutes), not mythological or Biblical figures. With their backs turned to the viewer as they bathe, comb their hair, and so on, they are oblivious to being observed, or, as Degas wrote, "It is as though you were looking through a keyhole."

Degas's failing eyesight may have resulted in more simplified compositions, especially in his pastels. The influence of van Gogh, Gauguin, and others may have led him to brighter colors, more expressionist gesture, and simplified compositions. In his later work he especially captured the figure in movement (for example, "The Tub" [1886]), which the advent of photography was making obsolete. It is arguably fair to say that Degas, a 19th-century artist who lived well into the 20th century, brought to the portrayal of the nude some of the same seismic changes that Cezanne did to landscape. Degas's influence in that respect was incalculably important; Picasso, Matisse, de Kooning, and Bacon would continue these explorations. Even today, painters, whether consciously or not, still draw new meanings from his constant searching of the figure for inspiration. Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to Gaugin, wrote that the "calm and modeled nudes of Degas have a kind of perfection that, like coitus, can make the infinite tangible for us."