Ivory wine

Griessmann, Balthasar (ca 1620-1706)
Ivory Goblet, ca 1680
ivory
20 5/8 in.
Getty Museum 2006.26

A small little book (Fruits of Desire) I came across today at work was dedicated to a single ivory goblet. Oh what a goblet it is! Held by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, this goblet "celebrates wine and explores the benefits and risks of its consumption. Culminating with an allegory of youth, it challenges the viewer to think about the degree to which pleasure and duty play their parts in our making life choices". (Getty bookstore)

I've always been a sucker for ivory carvings, never able to pass one by in a museum, the intricate carving are mesmerizing and this goblet is no exception. There is not a single inch that doesn't deserve focused attention. I'm excited to have discovered Griessmann, a bit of searching has unearthed more amazing carvings by the 17th century artist.

The Fall of Man , The Sacrifice of Isaac

Female Figure

Female Figure, ca. 3500-3400 B.C.E.
Terracotta, painted
Ma'mariya, Egypt?
11 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 2 1/4 in.
Brooklyn Museum

This is one of the oldest items in the Brooklyn Museum.
"Representations of female figures with highly abstracted forms occur throughout most of the Predynastic Period. On statuettes of this period, the legs are usually not articulated and the faces are beaklike." (BM collections)

I am going to try to broaden and diversify the types of art on this blog. I'm aware that I tend toward European and American Modern and Contemporary since this is my area of specialty. I am still attempting to pull objects and work that I personally find intriguing (not necessarily like) but will give fair warning that my scholarly knowledge on their subject will be limited.

I am fascinated by the abstract nature of this figure. As quoted above this was common in the Predynastic period yet the details of the figure (symbolism, identity, function) are not exactly known. It is interesting to note how this object has been presented to us through the photograph. The black background helps the figure to pop out, emphasize the shapes created by her arms and the significant arch of her backside. The figure is currently on view, and I am curious as to how it is displayed. Most likely, set up to "stand" vertically, but would be able to see it in the round?

Burghers of Calais

Burghers of Calais, modeled 1884-95
Auguste Rodin
bronze cast - 1985
lost wax casting of plaster model
H. 82 1/2 in.
Metropolitan Museum of of Art

Right hand image - first casting of sculpture in Calais, France. Installed 1895.
Image: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/rodin/rodin_calais.html

One of the fascinating things about sculpture is the reproduction ability. Note the sculpture owned by the Met was cast in 1985, while the original was cast in 1895.

I discovered The Burghers of Calais during study for my first lecture hall lecture in graduate school. The work, along with much late 19th century work was strikingly different from my initial focus on Impressionism. The expression imbued in this monument is incredible, it works out now only of the subject matter (click on title above to get an overview of the story) of the sculpture but the texture and modeling, the position of the figures, facial expression, arm gestures and the hanging of heads. This approach to the monument was controversial because Rodin did not portray the burghers as heroes but as worn individuals. Rodin wished for the statue to be presented at the same level as the viewer, not on a pedestal, adding to the personal, real nature of the work.

Bricks

Yellow, 2006
Nathan Sawaya
legos
The Art of the Brick

So sorry I missed yesterday!

Today's work is the result of a simple Google image search for "art". This was the first image in the list. The material is unique and a jump into the world of "The art of the brick" is pretty fascinating. The artist, Nathan Sawaya creates a variety of works with Legos. While many of his works are whimsical and cute, they are gimmicky and not particularly compelling. A few others, Yellow included, touch upon something beyond that gimmick created from Legos. Those I find most striking are his figural sculptures, in various states of disarray the legos creating dimension and strength yet falling apart. The monochrome color choices add to the depth of the works.

Image from Lancaster Museum of Art opening.

Combing

Woman Combing Her Hair, 1915
Alexander Archipenko (American, 1887-1964)
bronze, 13 3/4 x 3 1/4 x 3 1/8" (35 x 8.3 x 8 cm) including base
Museum of Modern Art

Archipenko was born in Ukraine, moving to Paris when he had a spout of difference in the art world in Ukraine. He ultimately ended up in New York where the majority of his career took place. I mention all of this, as it is pertinent to part of my job. I was cataloging a book on Archipenko to discover we had him catalogued under Russia, most likely the first volume we catalogued was before Ukraine was an option. Discussion ensued as to whether we should retroactively change these headings. I initially wanted to put him under Ukraine. ULAN (Union List of Artist Names) places him in this position but other sources such as MoMA name him American. It's an interested question as to whether an artist is categorized under his/her country of origin or his country of work, since we are interested in the work, the majority of professional time spent somewhere ultimately rules. Boring? Sometimes.

Anyway, I haven't spent a lot of time with Archipenko's work but I like the cubist smoothness in this particular piece. In some ways you can see it as a Picasso Cubist Lady in three dimensional form yet the edging and geometric shape which creating the negative space where the head should be, I find interesting. "The introduction of space into interior forms in these works, linking front and back, inside and outside, constitutes one of Archipenko's major contributions to twentieth-century sculpture and parallels contemporaneous inventions in the art of Umberto Boccioni and Naum Gabo" (Nasher Sculpture Center) I love the sculpture from the waist down as well, the curve of the thighs almost cutting off at the knees and shifting to sharpher more geometric form of the lower leg.

Real Inanimate

Tourists II, 1988
Duane Hanson
Autobody filler, fibreglass and mixed media, with accessories life size
Saatchi Gallery


To end the week with another foray into photo-realism we shift off the painted surface to the physical space of the gallery. Duane Hanson's hyper-realistic sculptures are practically indistinguishable from the real thing. With a focus on the typical every-day figure, the tourist, security guard, badly dressed person, Hanson creates exquisite incredibly life-like sculptures of middle-America.

Hanson casts from live models and recreates his sculptures in mixed media, often fiber glass resin (similar to Ron Mueck). I've seen many Hanson sculptures over the years, and am still occasionally duped (though briefly). The TMA has one of a forlorn, disheveled slouched man in a chair just to the side of the entrance of their contemporary galleries and while I am fully aware of it's existence as an inanimate sculpture, it still manages to command a presence. One which even as I intend to walk past it I am pulled to turn around to acknowledge as if he is a human sitting in the corner deserving recognition of existence.

"As amazing as they appear, there is much more to Hanson's sculpture than illusionistic wizardry. Hanson was a social realist, looking at a range of people in society and making observations about their condition in life. He recognized and admired ordinary people, like laborers and the elderly, who he believed had been marginalized by society. Through his art he sought to make the public aware of their presence and contributions to society." (Duane Hanson portraits from the Heartland -Mark M. Johnson)

Horses

Filigree, 1997
Deborah Butterfield

"To say Deborah Butterfield sculpts horses is too simplistic. Using wood, metal and bronze, she constructs, engineers, molds, hammers, pounds, rips and solders her pieces in what can be an epic struggle between artist and unrelenting materials." (artworks mag, 5/13/08)

I love Butterfield's horses. Until recently I was unaware that it is her sole subject. While at first thought this might seem repetitive, once you encounter more than one of her horses, the thought leaves your mind. Her horses are beautifully constructed sculptures. Starting with an armature to which individual pieces of would are attached by wire to create the sculpture, each piece of wood, meticulously marked for its location and is then recreated in bronze. The piece is the reassembled and welded together.

We have one of her horses her at TMA (outdoors in our sculpture garden) and I recently saw one at the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville (the first I've seen that wasn't displayed on the floor, it was hung on a wall in the gallery). While I'm happy to encounter her sculptures anywhere, seeing them outside is the most fitting, they become more imbued with their natural surroundings. Her titles are the names of actual horses. She and her husband live on a 350 acre working horse farm, check out the Art Works Magazine article for more.

Contemporary Sculpture

Piggy Back (A Caballit0) 1997
Juan Munoz (1953-2001)
Speed Art Museum Louisville, KY

I have a lot of thoughts on themes which I've been avoiding but I think I may follow one this week (we'll see what Tuesday holds...). Contemporary Sculpture will be my offering. I will try to share a range of work that has been created since 1980 and it may or may not cross over into installation (the history of sculpture class I took in college was predominantly installation - which I did find annoying at the time, my knowledge of sculpture history is not so good!)

Juan Munoz is one of my favorite contemporary sculptors (though he unfortunately passed away too soon in 2001). One of the special artists that always causes me an excited breath when I see one of his works in a museum visit. Happily, we have one of his sculptures at TMA, and I discovered a new one this past Friday at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY (which I highly recommend taking a visit too, both the city and the museum)

The experience of a Munoz sculpture or installation can be a little unnerving at first. His figures have incomplete faces, yet are not expressionless. One feels as if they have interrupted the space of the figures. While near life-size, their stature appears small due to the their often hunched or slumped physicalness. It often appears as if their bodies are not complete or that they cannot completely fill the space of the materiality of their clothing. The figures invoke a quietude that in a way requests respect from the spectator. Munoz deliberately stops short of fully enhanced realism in his sculptures with the intention of allowing them a greater and fuller life in their abstracted openness. This also adds to the sense of isolation the figures invoke. “The more realistic sculptures are meant to be," Muñoz has said, "the less interior life they have." (Speed descrip.) These figures have often taken position amongst architectural spaces in site specific installations created by Munoz. Unfortunately, I've never see one in person, but fell for Munoz through an exhibition catalog of one of these installations (A Place Called Abroad) at the Dia Art Foundation which I bought having never seen the show years ago.

Reading

Woman Reading, ca.1876, cast 1902
Aime-Jules Dalou (1838-1902)
Musee d'Orsay
H. 56.1; W. 43.9; D. 35.3 cm

This little gem was discovered on one of my weekly walks through one of the museum's galleries (I try to go once a week during lunch and spend time with things I've neglected up until now). I never noticed the piece before and adore the beauty and simplicity of the sculpture, and it doesn't hurt that the subject is a woman reading. This particular image comes from the collection of the Musee d'Orsay, as a number of statuettes were most cast from the original model, in various materials, stoneware, porcelain and bronze.

This particular statuette stems from an original model, Femme nue lisant dans un fauteuil
(Nude Woman Reading in an Armchair). This is my first foray into the work of Jules Dalou as a I rack up the areas of omission in my art historical brain (with the plethora of art history, that shall always be the case, happily!). My late 19th c. knowledge of sculptors is horribly limited to Rodin and it turns out Dalou was considered his rival for France's greatest sculptor! (as I read more, bits of memory float back so I am pretty sure he may have crossed my radar in the past but apparently did not stick!) "Dalou played a major role in French cultural life by providing influential alternatives to the Academy and the Salon as arbiters of modern art. He was a founding member of the Société des Artistes Français and later a founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts." (NGA bio)

Dalou had a strong belief in political and social equality, and is known for his statues of workers, in addition to grand-scale public works in Paris. Despite this, his domestic, more intimate realistic sculptures of women actually inaugurated the genre at the Salon in 1870 as the move beyond Academic Art (idealization of the human figure in this case) continued.

Hyperrealism

In Bed, 2005
Ron Mueck
Mixed media, 63 3/4 x 255 7/8 x 155 1/2 in.
(mold of fiberglass, from clay most likely)


I am currently reading The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber, and there is many a mention of artists ranging from Velazquez to Ron Mueck. Just adding to my ideas for art of the day, today is Mueck.

Mueck's hyperrealistic figurative sculptures are awesome. I have seen his works at various shows over the years but was lucky enough to see his solo show at the Brooklyn Museum last year. The hour long wait to get in was well worth it. Mueck's sculptures are realistic not only in their technical showcasing but also in the emotional content of the works. On a technical level, he leaves no detail unturned, from leg hair to facial pores, the detail is exquisite. Yet these sculptures are not only about technical prowess. In Bed, as you can see is way beyond life-size, while some of his work is tiny. Each figure displays a strong emotional content, sometimes making the viewer uncomfortable, they are not automaton figures. Mueck came into fine art through work as a model maker and puppeteer in film (worked on Labyrinth).

Mueck is amongst a range of excellent figurative sculptors and his realism reminds me of Duane Hanson. Hanson's works focus on the everyday reality of the characters which he creates in his figures, a middle-aged woman shopping, a man waiting for the bus. The sculptures are so realistic they require a doubletake, as one could walk past without realizing it is art and not another person. A similarity in Mueck's work is the everyday, but a less obvious everyday. The concern and uncertainty in the eyes of the woman of In Bed, the intimate yet uncomfortable pose of the partners in Spooning Couple.

A video showing more of Mueck's work.