studiosavant

Degas: Figures in Ertia

noreply@blogger.com (ahab) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:14:00 +0000

An art exhibit is a regular contest for our attentions – art’s attractions versus its distractions. It is contemporary fashion to design exhibitions with enough layers of rationalization that serious examinations of the art’s excellence or importance are pre-emptively deflected; and oddly, art we could expect to deliver the most punch commonly peers out at us through the highest stacks of defensive information. Extended labels, wall panels, reading cards, audio guides and docents crowd out the very art that they should be there to assist.

It is by now pretty much common knowledge that the Edgar Degas sculptures currently on exhibit in the AGA’s Poole Gallery are posthumously-cast editions of mostly non-extant, mostly wax originals, and that only one of the pieces was ever exhibited in its original non-bronze constitution during Degas’ lifetime. This information surely is germane to various academic –ologies, and students of art history should be concerned with scouring even the tiniest details of provenance for high accuracy, but I contend that delving into either tidbit diverts attention away from an appreciation of the things as they so stand. Fortunately, presuming one can avoid the pounce of an interpreter, the 40 or so bronzes in the show are beautiful enough, and carefully enough installed, that their allure is not much diminished by debates about authenticity or allegations of artistic intent.

The only impedance to clear viewing of the sculptures comes from a mundane source: plastic vitrines cause significant reflective and refractive interference. Within their encasements, many of the sculptures also find themselves situated among a gridlock of shadows that spotlights angle in through the pane joints. But the use of jewel cases is an unavoidable concession to critical museological functions. Bronze sculptures are durable objects, relatively speaking, but their patinas are sufficiently susceptible to the oils in a finger’s touch that putting 100 year old treasures under glass is a warranted concession: no less than when guarding against thieving or sneezing patrons.

The sculptures don’t suffer too badly for the ¼” plastic buffer though, as Degas’ human figures are generally most in focus between knee and collar-bone – there’s little need to look too closely for finer features. Despite extending from toepoint to fingertip, almost every sculpture is really more a concentrated study of the female torso. The appendages have been left relatively unworked, certainly not finished to the descriptive degree that the haunches have been fleshed out to; the extremities seem at times to have been grudgingly included as a mere suggestion of hands and feet and even heads. In most of the pieces this works out just fine. Subduing the intricate lineaments of an arabesque-ing dancer’s hands is an effective way to counter the dramatic outward gesticulation of her position – the eye is not caught and held at overly-fine details out on the periphery of the sculpture. Feet, when planted upon the ground, are as necessarily indistinct as a tree’s roots. Imperfectly formed heads tilt in approximate agreement with the pose but carry only faint facial expressions. All visual cues support the center of gravity, none distract from the bodily gesture.

"Little Dancer; Aged 14" is an obvious exception to all these particularities: no leotard wrinkle too insignificant to be rendered. This, the biggest sculpture in the exhibit, is adorned with a real tutu, a hair ribbon, and polychromed bodice and shoes. Although she cannot not qualify as the definitive Impressionist sculpture, she is nevertheless iconographic – a literal poster girl for Degas’ Impressionism. It may be hard to dislike her since "Little Dancer’s" disposition is that of ‘beguiling sweetie’. But the crux of the sculpture lies in how inert the metal feels mated to the ribbon and tutu (which looks to be rotting away before your very eyes). Overly detailed, long-fingered, large-palmed hands, laced together behind her back, are just more evidence of a disparity of parts in this sculpture. Cute as she may be, as a sculpture she is less than – a fraction of – the sum of her parts; she is the odd one out and late to the party.

Otherwise, the exhibition may be dually faulted in its selection and arrangement of dancers standing on one leg: too many, and all in rows. Chorus lines of arabesques and positioning dancers appear rather more like a flailing studio rehearsal than stage-ready choreography. Including even half as many dancers in the show would have magnified their poise. And poise, not motion, is the dominant theme of the 40 bronzes.

There is another sense in which the title of the exhibit, Figures in Motion, is a flawed premise: Degas’ intention may very well have been to capture in wax or plaster the flicker of a dancing ballerina or prancing horse (art historians love such tidy surmises) but no matter how they’re lit the bronze casts we have here stand oh so very stock still. Darkly patinaed sculptures provide high-contrast surfaces that cause an apparent gain in mass, such that guesses to heft might figure as greater than hollow bronze and maybe as much as solid lead. Viewers are from most available angles reduced to searching out silhouettes for accurate clues to each thing’s specific gravity and balance – its poise.

Moving back to the essence of any visual art exhibit, what about the sculptures that look just too good to simply read about, walk away from and forget. Which ones are the good ones? What’s good about them? I could select easily half of what’s in this exhibit to approve: “Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot”, “Woman Taken Unawares”, “Spanish Dance”, “Woman Seated in an Armchair Wiping Her Neck”, “The Tub”, “Picking Apples”, “Pregnant Woman”, all four riderless horses.

One sculpture stands out from the rest as it actually is a figural fragment. “Woman: Rubbing Her Back with a Sponge” is a thick, truncated torso with certain brazing seams left visible (as is a regular feature of Rodin bronzes). It has a single skinny arm, which does not from most viewing angles wholly belong with the modeled logic in the rest of the body. The arm might reasonably have been shortened to a stub, but because its cocked elbow acts as a starboard jib, loss of the arm would likely diminish the sculpture’s expressive twist and intriguing contours. The relationship between this lone de-limbed piece and the rest of the be-limbed dancers lies in a taut bit of balance. The torso appears to be quite over-weighted to the rear, almost as if, should the lower portion be restored, the figure would be kneeling.

“The Tub” is another unique piece; its configuration landing it in some grey zone between the ranks of ‘sculpture in the round’ and ‘sculptural high relief’. The girl reclining in an half-empty/half-full bath seems the greater part of a whole figure, but upon inspection is made almost entirely of limbs. This may be the only sculpture in the show in which the figure’s limbs are up for consideration, but not its torso. The tub’s rim is a natural framing device that reinforces the tub water’s flattening force resulting in a 3d sculpture that emerges from, somewhat at odds with, its 2d ground – a tension that is only exacerbated by the decorative (art deco?) bronze slab that the whole thing rests upon. In a sense, its worth as an artwork lies in its embodiment of contradiction and exploration of semantical space.

Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot

There are sculptures in Degas: Figures In Motion that do not depict poise so much as describe an instant of inertia: the pent up energy of potential motion. “Picking Apples” is a gleeful, off balance dance of life that only remotely depicts its titular subject matter. Perhaps recalling the days when she was the agile “Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot”, the “Pregnant Woman” cannot now lean forward far enough to see even the tops of her toes. The “Woman Taken Unawares” is wildly indecisive and caught, psychologically as much as physically, between demureness and demurring.

Woman Taken Unawares

It is of course the equestrian sculptures that are most suggestive of motion. Each of the riderless horses has one or two special sculptural traits that set it off from the others. One, with a wonderful muzzle modeled by only a couple pinches in the wax, rears upon wire armatures unadorned with hooves. Another has an exaggerated neck and narrowness of shoulders that emphasise its side view: serving as a portrait of a remarkable, memorable horse friend. The one with no neck at all (only its twisted-wire armature holds a down-turned head in place) seems to carry a cumbrously affective yoke upon its shoulders. Smeared daubs of wax that evince surefooted horse hooves equate directly to Degas’ treatment of the dancers’ light feet, but at so much smaller a scale the effect draws rather more attention to itself, to the light canter of the animal, and away from any of the top-heaviness apparent in an unmoving horse.

It is art historians’ place to know by whose hand(s) these things were made, to whom attributions should refer, and in what regard. A handsome hardcover catalogue raisonné accompanies Degas: Figures in Motion; its scholarship regarding the serialization of Degas’ works seems comprehensive. What may never be agreed upon is whether displaying artworks that were never intended by the artist to be exhibited constitutes a moral dilemma. In any event, not only is a deceased artist’s mind unknowable, those responsible for casting the things have passed away by now as well – unless our great museums are to be implicated in illicit duplication of the things, there can be no one left to prosecute.

Given the quality of even this remnant of Degas-derived sculpture, surely no one will disagree that it is a special thing that his originals were salvaged for sharing with the world. Dubious of origin or not, they are very fine things worthy of conservation and exhibition. The breadth of Degas’ sculptural explorations, a mode of art-making for which he is not best known, is instructive – I find that it sets the bar for a committed sculptor very high indeed. Inspirational stuff. My congratulations and thanks to the AGA for bringing this show to town and displaying it to benefit.

Let's Get One Thing Out of the Way First

noreply@blogger.com (ahab) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:02:00 +0000

Culturally sensitive eyes in my little province of the world were, this past weekend, turned expectantly towards the opening of its greatest-to-date monument to the visual arts. The every aspiration of Edmontonian culturati found glorious expression in the grand reopening of the Art Gallery of Alberta on January 29th, January 30th, or January 31th (depending on whether you dropped $500 on a gala dinner plate; cut the proverbial ribbons with upsized chrome scissors; or settled to be one of 350 people/hour getting in for the low, low price of printing out a digital form). Relentlessly branding the place for months on end, AGA marketers have been stocking shelves, delivering press copy, and selling every square inch of the new building’s plaque-able surface to civic boosters – entities regional, national and corporation-al.

In any event, self-styled supporters of the arts have largely embraced not just the new building but the schtick that accompanies it as well. I spoke with one longtime participant in the gallery's endeavours who believes wholeheartedly that the AGA's new building exemplifies charter donor John Poole's exhortation to "build it right and cut no corners." Although I would not wish to dampen such sincere enthusiasm (I recognize the benefits of having a new and improved regional gallery), for myself I cannot so heartily affirm Randall Stout’s scrawling building as a sign that Edmonton has finally arrived among the world’s most refined and cosmopolitan cities. Because I’m paying close attention to it, and because sustained attention begets appreciation, and because practiced appreciation develops taste, I recognize significant flaws in the new building.

There has been enough muckraking of dissenters that I feel I must first state the obvious: criticality does not a hater make. I for one always try to put honest words to my thoughts and to pay as little mind to popular opinion or political tactic as possible. I understand that my opinion is contrary to many of those most closely involved in this city’s culture scene, but who in principle would disagree that diverse opinions only have a chance at becoming dialogue (and who doesn't value dialogue?) when they are allowed to butt one against another?

Mere contrariness becomes no one; even so, I really can’t get behind calling the loopy parts of the structure “the Borealis”, as Stout and Co. are said to do. I’ve been privy to all sorts of trash talk about the place and I’ve heard it referred to by tradesmen as “the Borealis” exactly once and sarcastically, at that. It is little wonder that such a high-minded tag hasn’t caught on, not least since the stainless steel loop-de-loop doesn’t look remotely like the northern lights. “Plane Crash”, a regular-joe reference that I’ve heard numerous times already, could stick but even I hope it doesn’t. I’m looking for a more endearing term that is attentive to the primary visual quality (the gestalt) of Alberta’s premier visual arts centre: incongruity. For lack of the perfect moniker, I’ll just refer to the New Building hereon in as the “Newb”.

I grant that upon first approach the New Building is impressive, albeit in the same value-free way that we might understand when someone says a painting is ‘interesting’, and inasmuch as whatever impression it does leave is indelible. In daylight, obdurate-cast facets of glass repel rather than attract, but under a night sky the glassy façade glows in a pleasantly inviting manner. Inside or out, night time is when the Newb is at its best – disjointed silver cockles soften into aqueous moieties and awkwardly canting steel erectors recede when interior illuminations overtake the sun's. Stout’s lighting designer earns a respectable grade by redeeming the exterior from 24-hour frigidity.

And yet, as I feared in the months leading up to this opening weekend when all that was possible was to peek into the construction over its street-side hoarding, the place is disorientingly scale-less. Walking up to the Newb yields unreliable information about how many stories tall it may be, or about what it might feel like on the inside. With the visible entrances made of tall, all-glass gates; perplexing aperatures into a patio in the upper reaches; and little to no indication of how the Newb's loops structurally grip the ground, the human-scale information that we generally take for granted when navigating through our urban architecture is almost entirely absent.

There is one consistency to be found in the New Building: disorienting perspectival cues. Enter the atrium and even those most reliable of all human scale indicators, other people, appear diminished and at a distance – as though seen through a convex lens. Beside the PULL sign on the doors there should be an additional warning: “Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear”. The polished natural concrete floor is the only immediate proof that one has not stepped into some sort of veneered vortex. The lowest ceiling available to hook your visual pitons into is about 30 feet up. At a glance silver and white metals rake across the upper reaches, not wisping ephemerally as cirrus clouds but looming heavily like the bottom of an airliner at that fraught instant before it touches down. Of all the dramatic effects that it would be possible to achieve when designing an experimental building, I’d be willing to bet that vertigo is not any architect’s most desirable. (Except for a rollercoaster architect.)

Even the primary light feature that beckons one in from the cold turns out upon inspection to induce a dizziness of its own. A Plexiglas column of frosted blue light juts from the concrete like some retro-futuristic spatial distortion weapon. It shares a quality specific to black light in that it doesn’t stop wavering long enough to for the eye to settle comfortably upon it. Think of how blue Christmas lights seem to be simultaneously right in front of you and impossibly distant, then imagine a 30 foot tall electric blue bulb and you may be able to appreciate the dimensional shifts it causes. Never even mind how difficult it is to focus on the names of the New Building’s donors printed in black vinyl on the surface.

I've already written elsewhere of unconvincing surface treatments throughout. The zinc cladding looks believable until you're within 6 feet, the lobes of stainless sheet steel only appear seamless and smooth from six hundred feet distant. Obviously, inside the Newb you are brought within those parameters, and compounding the sense that every visible surface is only a membrane are unconvincing junctions between disparate materials. Patches of fir lath do not nicely complement rolled and burnished steel; tempered glass does not join with concrete in any easy way. It is my experience that solid, discrete, believable junctures are crucial, imperative really, to achieving unity with disparate materials. Weakly designed, or weakly constructed? I suspect some combination of each. A bit of scuttlebutt from the Artist/Industry event: winging stainless swoops as well finished as on one of Gehry's buildings would've required another $20,000,000.

That there are customized views from the second and third floors onto Sir Winston Churchill Square, and of City Hall in particular, is one of Randall Stout's most leaned-upon justifications for a 60 foot high glass atrium. In order to catch a cohesive glimpse of the city beyond a viewer must either accept a composite fly's-eye view by willfully ignoring the geometric oddity of the broad steel window casings, or shuffle forward and back and all around then tilt his head just-so. Other than in the vestibule, there may not be a single pane of atrium glass that stands square and plumb. I have heard dozens of people resort to defending the incongruities of the AGA’s New Building by saying, “at least it’s not square”. But it is so far out of square that I don't think the Newb catalyzes its architectural environment effectively, not within city limits. To lay it on a bit thicker: it is a colossal cubist head so emphatically narcissistic that the rest of the Square is rendered moot in its presence.

Fortunately, excellent gallery spaces easily compensate for their shell, which is adequate in the way that the hermit crab’s chosen home is so long as it is big enough to retreat into. (Interestingly, after writing this I saw the Globe and Mail quote the AGA’s chief curator likening the relationship of the building’s interior and exterior to those of a conch shell.) The gallery spaces are generally voluminous but of a decent variety to accommodate the various arrangements specific to the needs of nearly any imaginable exhibit: intimate or blockbuster, classical or contemporary. Truly excellent lighting and environmental systems enhance the possibility of presenting truly world-class exhibitions. As a museum for exhibiting art the Newb is a notable improvement over the slowly-failing Brutalist building that preceded it; as a space for human occupancy, the first shell was the more homey.

But note that art is not among the first things to confront a visitor to the Art Gallery of Alberta in its New Building. Whatever art one might find is a long ways in, past the blue-lit spire, ZINC the restaurant, Ernest C. Manning Hall, Shop AGA, the white hottub sculpture that is the front desk, and art is not visible from any site line even 40 steps in. Except for the possibility of showing art made of impervious materials (steel sculpture, say) there is no remedy as the vast atrium is an environment insufficiently controlled to protect the more fragile arts from mould and degradation.

It is not only the AGA's facade and surrounds that have changed. The easily intuited www.artgalleryalberta.ca has now been recast as www.youraga.ca and “Your AGA” adverts have cropped up as far afield as Medicine Hat, AB. A dubious five-colour acronym logo that reads ASIA as naturally as it does AGA replaces the much classier black and red full-name version. To his staff, Executive Director Gilles Hebert recently described The Art Gallery of Alberta as “a new organization”; and certainly, any institution that throws so many resources into re-branding itself twice in three years (its staff having grown at least 150% in the same period and primarily in marketing/development) cannot simultaneously retain a clear sense of its longer history. Traces of what the Edmonton Art Gallery (EAG) had been good at/good for over the years has been regrettably displaced, and all but forgotten.

My cynicism is admittedly tempered by certain statistics – by various measures the Newb is a popularly acclaimed hit. It has been solidly sold out. The gala VIP event filled up long in advance of its privileged first night; the Artist/Industry party was over capacity; somewhere in the range of 10,000 timed tickets for the two or three days following the ribbon-cutting ceremony were claimed online in about 24 hours; membership sales are at an all-time high; and wedding receptions are booked solid through 2011. It was immensely encouraging to see so many people milling around an art gallery over the weekend, and even the first day of paid admissions seemed significantly busier than I was anticipating.

Glorious details not unlike these have been released to the press on a weekly basis for months on end prior to Saturday the 30th, and for its part the press has been glad to report as fact anything AGA spokespeople declared as such. In a TV interview the mayor quixotically spoke to hypothetical complaints by people who might say the Newb is only more urban blight and by perturbed hockey fans who might feel that their true culture has been co-opted and tax dollars funnelled into the Newb instead of a New Arena: he said they could dislike the New Building if they wished but that they could not, must not, deny it its place as a necessary symbol of Edmonton’s pre-eminence. The press agrees, it would seem, for there has been hardly a whit of journalistic pressure applied since the moment Randall Stout was acclaimed.

This is surely the most propitious opportunity we'll ever have have to critically consider the Art Gallery of Alberta's contribution to architecture in Edmonton. At least until another 50 years have passed and more moneyed civic champions of the arts bequeath the AGA sums for its New New Building. Like it or not, the Newb is what we'll be stuck with, for the remainder of my lifetime anyhow. What we 'must' do is get critiques of its architecture-ality out of the way now so we can start considering the art that it will house.

Artists and Their Soapboxes

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:00:00 +0000

[Via BoingBoing, Courtesy Devil Devil]

Survival of the Twittist

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:39:00 +0000

QUESTION THE MEDIA!!!

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:08:00 +0000

The Corruption of Art

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 07:59:00 +0000

Look Around You: Iron

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:57:00 +0000

Seduced by Spruce

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:29:00 +0000

Touching Wood (Revised)

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:53:00 +0000

[Via SEE Magazine]

Wood Forms: Sculpture by Cesar Alvarez
Opening at Common Sense Gallery (10546-115th St.) on Jan. 15.

For most, seizing the opportunity to dust off a hobby and make it your life focus isn’t really in the cards. This was certainly true for local sculptor Cesar Alvarez — until 1998, art was a side project, something he tinkered around with in his off time from being a journeyman carpenter and father of three.

“I’d wanted to be an artist my whole life,” he says. “Even as a little boy, I’d be scraping wood on cement or chewing it into shapes. When I moved here from Chile in 1974, the circumstances didn’t allow me to go through with it. I had a family to support.” He worked instead as a carpenter until his youngest was old enough to be self-sufficient. “Then I went back to school. And now I am an artist,” he says.

As a graduate from the University of Alberta’s MFA program Alvarez has shown his work in various galleries around Edmonton to considerable praise. Although he paints and uses metal in some of his pieces, his preferred medium is wood. “I try not to get caught up in the preciousness of the material because that limits you,” he says. “None of my pieces are high brow and I mostly use spruce because it is easy to find and inexpensive. It’s more liberating that way.”

The tactile qualities of wood are as important to Alvarez as the overall concept of the sculpture. He subsequently puts a great deal of time and effort into carefully sanding and waxing each piece. “People sense things differently,” he says. “Some people touch from above, others from beneath. By smoothing the entire piece, everyone gets the same sensation no matter where they touch. At one show, people were hiding their hands at their sides and sneaking touches here and there. I was, like, ‘please, touch!’”

Alvarez will be showing five sculptures at Common Sense Gallery. Three of his works are a follow-up to a series of steel sculptures he completed for his MFA, including “Queen’s Beddings,” which recently caught the eye of New York art critic Piri Halasz. “I see this imaginary cube and I fill the cube with all the elements in my head. Instead of bursting outward, the forms draw you inside,” he says. The remaining pieces are from another series. [This paragraph has been edited for accuracy.]

Although he is passionate about art, Alvarez says he can’t take himself with the same seriousness. “I don’t pull all these grand theories into my work,” he says. “I see an image in my mind and I make it. If it changes halfway through, so be it. I don’t know why we are always forced to explain our reasons. I know the nature of the wood and I know the images I want to create. So I create them.”

[Images from top to bottom: Prince's Napery, King's Closet, Queen's Beddings; by César Alvarez.]

Once Upon a Time in China

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:13:00 +0000

Reading that the terracotta warriors of Emperor Qin are coming to Canada (from Washington D.C., to Toronto ON), I was reminded of the first time I saw them, back in 1989, at the site of their discovery, in Xi'an, China. Despite the signs in English forbidding photography, I 'accidentally' snapped off this flash-shot with my snappy new camera with the digital date-stamp feature. Happy April Fools, terracotta bitches!

I didn't make any notes on my travels, but I took many pictures (on real 35mm film- only the date stamp was digital), which I thought I'd go through, and scan some of the shots I took of some of the numerous sculptures and monuments I saw on my trip.

This one, the Statue of Five Goats, is a famous local landmark in Guangzhou. "Legend has it that 5 celestial beings brought 5 goats into Guangzhou. The goats were all carrying rice, which symbolized that they would make sure that the area would always be free of famine. Guangzhou has paid tribute to these benevolent goats by making them the symbol of the city. There are many goat statues in the "Goat City" and the Statue of the Five Goats is the most impressive."

Sculptural menageries of mundane and fantastical creatures are a common artistic theme, with these leonine beasts serving the typical symbolic 'guardian' role, placed at important entrances within the Forbidden City in Beijing.

A varied assortment of other exotic beasts, such as the golden elephant the younger me sits next to, line the pathways. [Yes, thank you, I realize I look very dorky to 21st century eyes. Actually, this look was very cool in 1989.]

Tiananmen Square; an overwhelmingly huge paved open space, home to the columnar 'Monument to the People's Heroes', and the figurative monument at Mao's Mausoleum seen here; was eerily empty and peaceful when I was there, considering, in hindsight, the events of just a few weeks later.

Jan 15 2010 @ Common Sense: Wood Forms

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Starting January 15, Common Sense presents Wood Forms: Sculptures by César Alvarez. A recent graduate of the University of Alberta’s acclaimed sculpture MFA program, Alvarez has caught the eye of critics both at home and abroad with his recent work. Veteran New York art critic Piri Halasz called “Queen’s Beddings”, one of Alvarez’s latest works, the “most exciting new sculpture” she had seen on her recent Edmonton survey:

“Made of stained, waxed, & exquisitely pale wood, its surface was so sensuous that it made me want to caress it. The shape was also exciting: something of a table with what seemed a mostly flat top, but with all manner of startling new things going on below.... Born in Chile, he migrated to Canada at the age of 24, taught himself carpentry and passed the provincial licensing exams to become a journeyman carpenter and cabinet maker. Later, he turned to art, and enrolled in [Professor Peter] Hide’s program at the University of Alberta, but “Queen’s Beddings” clearly demonstrates the importance of his earlier experience in wood-working. Alvarez, too, is one of [the Edmonton Contemporary Artist Society’s] newer members, and the work he is showing... has no equal in New York.
-Piri Halasz, From the Mayor’s Doorstep, Oct. 2009

Wood Forms: Sculptures by César Alvarez opens with a public reception at 7:00 pm on Friday, January 15, 2010, with the artist in attendance, and runs until February 28.

Admission to Common Sense is always free, by appointment or by chance.

Art Of The Helmet

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:02:00 +0000

[Via SEE Magazine]

Edmonton artist Ryan McCourt makes some pretty fancy things
to put on your head (Published December 10, 2009 by Mari Sasano in Arts Feature)

Portrait Helmets
Common Sense Gallery, 10546 115 St.
By appointment, until December 20th.

These aren’t your usual helmets, folks. Not the hockey variety, and certainly not football. These helmets are art.

“The first helmet I made, the Elvish King, started out as an abstract sculpture. I was using a piece of brass in the shape of a face, cut in half.”

Ryan McCourt is best known for making massive steel sculptures. He has taken part in four exhibitions and has commissions for large, outdoor public art. But with “Portrait Helmets,” he turns to a smaller, literally more human scale: wearable art, in the form of brass helmets.

Each helmet is created as a character, such as the Helm of the Grieving Gardener, the Helm of the Critic, or the Helm of the African Queen. Working on this scale means that McCourt is able to add more detail into each piece, but ultimately it isn’t much different than his larger work.

“The large works, those are made of steel,” he says.

“There’s a general shape vocabulary in steel, with pipes and round shapes. Whereas in brass, the range of shapes you could start with are much broader. There are some of the same structural things, but also you can also have dishes and bows and decorative stuff, and menageries of animals.”

And then of course , there are other advantages, many decorative elements are available pre-made, in the form of brass ornaments.

“With the Helm of the Gorgon, I knew I needed a bunch of snakes. It’s hard to find brass snakes, so I had to improvise using long-necked birds. So I shopped all the Goodwills to buy them up. I started to get recognized at the Value Village, too. They’re quite kitschy.”

The bird butts were recycled into Lisa Simpson-like hair spikes for the African Queen.

McCourt sees each object as a projection of a character, but at the same time, they have the possibility of transforming the wearer.

“I suppose it’s imaginative,” McCourt says.

“In reality, they are pretty uncomfortable, but in each piece there is the idea of transformation. A lot of people call them masks. And they are a kind of disguise.

“Many have face pieces, and they take on a theatrical role. The African Queen, for example, is based on traditional masks used for ceremonies.”

McCourt connects his work to a larger cultural tradition.

“I think it’s very rich, culturally. At a sculptural level, each helmet stands in for the head. The personality is in the head wear. It’s a riddle, you pick out the details to tell the story. And it’s a personal thing, everyone sees something different.”

He even has a helmet for me.

“The Helm of the Critic has a globe, a ring of keys and a flower on the brow. And there are magnifying lenses where the eyes are, so you can see all the fine details, drawer pulls as hair, and a moving chin piece so it can talk.”

It’s a perfect likeness, metaphorically speaking.

Helmet-Cam

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:55:00 +0000

"The... brass helms recall McCourt’s earlier interest in the modeled-steel portrait head, an ancient artistic preoccupation; these are a light-hearted/-touched try at encasing in brass the personalities of their subjects. Their final forms were only arrived at after much putting on and taking off – constituent parts on helmet and helmet on head."

-Rob Willms

Ryan McCourt's Portrait Helmets runs until December 20 at Common Sense.

Friday Night Reminder

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:09:00 +0000

Ryan McCourt’s Portrait Helmets opens with a public reception at 7:00 pm on Friday, November 20, with the artist in attendance, and runs until December 20.

Admission to Common Sense is always free, by appointment or by chance.

Some Thoughts On The New AGA Logo

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:06:00 +0000

See, this is their new logo...... but, from the sheer number of people who say they see "asia" instead of "aga", maybe they should have went with this...Of course, that would have been better suited if the architect used Edmonton's trademark pyramid shape in his design.

Others have pointed out the similarity of the AGA's logo to another company's well-known corporate identity...

edmonton bontemporary art yallery

... of course, had the AGA's team gone as carefree as Ebay's designers, and jostled their letters up a bit, they might have dropped their inverted-a 'G' below the baseline to give it a descender (like actual lower-case letter Gs have), lending to readability. Details...

I suppose, in the end, to really judge the new logo, one could always use the old artists' trick of looking at it in a mirror to see how it holds up...
Hey! Whadya know? I have no trouble reading that!
This new logo might just signify our new grotesque art gallery quite well, after all.

More Sculpture, As Seen in DC

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Indian sculpture from the Freer+Sackler Galleries.

At the Corcoran: Eakins.

At the NGA: Tassaert, Maillol, Carrier-Belleuse.

At the Hirshhorn: Manzù, Di Suvero, Miro, Caro, Cragg.

Visual Arts Job Board

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:51:00 +0000

The Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory at the University of British Columbia invites applications for a tenure-track faculty appointment in Visual Art at the rank of Associate or Assistant Professor with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2010.

UBC, one of the largest and most distinguished universities in Canada, has excellent resources for scholarly research and artistic practice. The visual art program partners with strong art history and curatorial studies programs to provide unique studio programs for its graduate and undergraduate students. The department is also associated with a leading contemporary art gallery, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and the internationally recognized Museum of Anthropology. For more information on the department visit www.ahva.ubc.ca.

The Department seeks an individual who pursues studio practice against a strong background of contemporary, art historical and theoretical concerns. The successful candidate will be expected to maintain an active program of research, exhibition, graduate supervision, teaching and service. Demonstrating excellence in innovative pedagogical approaches is essential. An ability to form interdisciplinary collaborations (with other departments and institutions) is also an asset.

The candidate must possess the following minimum qualifications:

an MFA degree or equivalent;
an active national and international exhibition record, including catalogue publications on his or her work;
demonstrated potential for high quality research and teaching at all levels from foundation to graduate;
strong commitment to administrative responsibilities and curriculum development;
a serious engagement with contemporary art practice, theory and critical discourse;

Applicants must submit the following:

A letter of application including a statement of artistic, research and teaching philosophies; visual documentation of current work (for example, CD-ROM to a maximum of 30 images, DVD of no longer than 12 minutes, or URL); relevant publications and exhibitions including authored works and reviews; detailed CV; evidence of teaching effectiveness; and three confidential letters of reference (either included in the application, or sent under separate cover).

The applications and inquiries should be addressed to:

Professors John O’Brian and Catherine Soussloff, Co-Chairs, Visual Art Search Committee, Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, University of British Columbia, 403-6333 Memorial Road, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 1Z2, Canada.

Deadline: Applications and all supporting materials must be received by December 1, 2009.

Two (or three) New Sculptures

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:29:00 +0000

Gold Rush, 2009, brazen patinated metal.

The Oracle of Auricles, 2009, brazen patinated metal.

Hale Pahu ia, 2009, brazen patinated metal.

More DC Sights

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:41:00 +0000

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

Painting After Rembrandt, National Gallery,
Washington DC, autumn 2009.

The White House, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

Work Zone, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

Dry Cleaners, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

Buildings, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

Farmers' Market Cargo, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

National City Christian Church, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

Ornamental Cabbages, Washington DC, autumn 2009.

From Piri's Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:08:00 +0000

(Via An Appropriate Distance)

FROM THE MAYOR'S DOORSTEP
by Piri Halasz

NO. 86: 15 OCTOBER 2009....REPORT FROM THE WEST....

"In all, the ECAS show displayed work by 40 different artists, including some from Calgary, Saskatchewan and Thunder Bay, Ontario . I regret that I don’t have space to comment on all 40, but I did want to at least mention the names of 11 artists whom I can’t deal with in more detail. All helped with their ECAS membership dues to bring me to Alberta, and for that, I thank them. The range of media and subject matter in their contributions was indeed impressive. They are: Mark Bellows, Douglas Bentham, Ann Clarke, Dick Der, Michèle Drouin, Bruce Dunbar, Edward Epp, Bernard Hippel, Kara Nina Maehler, Shawn Serfas, and Katherine Sicotte.

...

The show included six very appealing representational paintings, all landscapes and nature studies: by Hendrik Bres, Nola Cassady, Brenda Kim Christiansen, James Davies, Gerald Faulder and Hilary Prince.

...

At ECAS, however, most of the youthful excitement centered around the sculpture on display. Peter Hide was the catalyst here, not only with his own large, magnificent mild-and-cast steel “Sleepwalker,” but also through the enthusiasm he has instilled in a handful of his former students from the University of Alberta, in particular Linda Maines, Bianca Khan, Rob Willms, Andrew French and César Alvarez. I suppose I should also include Ryan McCourt, for he too studied with Hide, but his contribution to the ECAS show was at cross-purposes with its main thrust. Theatrically titled, “The Eminence of Intuition,” it consisted of a life-size, very skillfully made and very realistic steel centaur, armed with a spear decorated with a banner and carrying a shield with a Medusa head on it. McCourt himself seems to be a kind man. When he arrived at my hotel to drive me to his North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop, I asked him to help me find a store that would sell me a battery for my aged Timex. He did. At the Workshop, he has also installed a veritable shrine in honor of Greenberg’s 100^th birthday, with copies of all Greenberg’s books. McCourt’s centaur appears to have been a great hit with schoolchildren, and was featured in the Edmonton Journal. Such observers may have missed the attitude animating the sculpture, an attitude characterized by the artist himself as “in your face.” I, on the other hand, was acutely aware of this aggressive attitude – maybe because I see so much of it in New York. True, I haven’t seen any centaurs in the Big Apple, but the in-your-face attitude is like with me in every museum show of contemporary art in New York, and in 99.9 percent of New York’s gallery exhibitions. I don’t have to come to Edmonton to find it.

What I really enjoyed was the various ways Hide’s other proteges are gradually working their ways toward independent expression within a truly modernist frame of reference. Willms is still perhaps the closest to Hide’s idiom – yet the shape of his tall & slender “Sleight of Stature” resembled more his own tall, lean body shape. Made of welded & rusted steel, this sculpture had a graceful, swaying motion, and the combination surface appearance of rust and a greenish patina almost made it glow. Also impressive was the impishly-titled steel “I’d Rather Be Canoodling” by Maines. Small and low-slung, it had a fluid, horizontal motion. Maines explained to me that Hide encourages his students to take inspiration from their daily lives. Maines, whose day job is as an operating-room nurse, incorporates pillow-like shapes into some of her sculpture, and collections of metal strips resembling medical instruments into others. Khan’s background includes architecture, and from it she had taken glass bricks. “Bicuspid,” her sculpture in the ECAS show, combined a long, low-slung steel cart with 8 large glass bricks, for an intriguing combination of shapes and textures. French’s sculpture at ECAS was small and not striking, but at the North Edmonton Sculpture Workshop I saw two large pieces that he was working on, one green and one yellow, both characterized by massive blocky shapes and decidedly promising.

The most exciting new sculpture on view at ECAS was “Queen’s Beddings” by César Alvarez. Made of stained, waxed, & exquisitely pale wood, its surface was so sensuous that it made me want to caress it. The shape was also exciting: something of a table with what seemed a mostly flat top, but with all manner of startling new things going on below. Like more than a few other members of ECAS, Alvarez came to it –and to art in general--relatively late in life. Born in Chile, he migrated to Canada at the age of 24, taught himself carpentry and passed the provincial licensing exams to become a journeyman carpenter and cabinet maker. Later, he turned to art, and enrolled in Hide’s program at the University of Alberta, but “Queen’s Beddings” clearly demonstrates the importance of his earlier experience in wood-working. Alvarez, too, is one of ECAS’s newer members, and the work he is showing again has no equal in New York. True, Willard Boepple also works in wood, and sometimes with a comparably sensuous finish, but his sculptures are more graceful and (by comparison) more surrealistic, while Alvarez displays a sturdier, more workmanlike sensibility – two strong personalities, contrasting outlooks on life & art. As far as that goes, New York also has no equal to Hide, nor to such up-and-comers as Willms, Maines, etc. I’m not saying this happy situation in Edmonton will last forever, but then who among us will? For myself, I just intend to keep going as long as I can, if only because it’s so boring not to. And, for the time being, I emerged from my visit feeling happy that I’d gone and gratified to see so much good new work being done"

Click here to read the full column...

Sculptor of Renown Showing Until Nov. 14

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:02:00 +0000

Heads Up @ Common Sense November 20th

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Starting November 20, 2009, Common Sense presents Ryan McCourt’s Portrait Helmets, an exhibition of eleven recent brass sculptures by the award-winning Edmonton artist.

Taking the form of ornate metal headwear, McCourt’s Portrait Helmets draw their inspiration from a variety of mythical, cultural, archetypal, and personal sources. While these sculptures make clear reference to the high-art forms of aristocratic armour from antiquity, the materials and methods of the sculptures’ construction are paradoxically modern and ‘low-brow’: cheap, decorative brass elements and other metallic trinkets from thrift stores and flea markets are improvisationally assembled by McCourt using household plumbing solder.

In the Renaissance, royal helms were far more than protective equipment for the battlefield. Most often worn at court ceremonies, and in parades, pageants, and jousting tournaments, they proclaimed the rulers’ strength and power. Elaborately decorated with imagery from history, mythology, or the bible, they symbolically presented emperors and kings as the new Caesar, the equal of Hercules, or the defender of the faith. Etched or engraved images of saints, or the virgin and child, asserted that rulers enjoyed divine protection. Much more costly than portraits by the leading painters of the day, such pieces of royal armor were dazzling works of wearable sculpture that affirmed their owners’ right to rule. In myth, magical powers of strength, invulnerability, and even invisibility were often inherent to the helmet itself, and were imparted to any wearer. Related to the traditional function of the mask, by donning these helms, one hides their real identity, while taking on a new ‘alter-ego’. As most of McCourt’s helmets are actually wearable, viewers of the show will have the opportunity to take on a new imagined identity, be it African queen, assassin, or another.

This is the first time most of these sculptures have been publicly exhibited, save one. The Helmet of Laocoön, featured in the 2009 Wearable Art Awards in Port Moody BC, won First Prize in their international Headdress competition.

Ryan McCourt’s Portrait Helmets opens with a public reception at 7:00 pm on Friday, November 20, with the artist in attendance, and runs until December 20.

Admission to Common Sense is always free, by appointment or by chance.

Presbyterian Homesick Blues

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:24:00 +0000

Chuck Redd Presents the Ladies, featuring Chuck Redd on Drums, Amy Shook on Bass, Leigh Pilzer on Sax, and Jen Krupa (with the genes of Gene) on Trombone. Bootleg recorded at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. on Friday, October 30, 2009.

Did Somebody Say Degas Sculptures?

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:31:00 +0000

I heard some print-by-night paper-news organization had a recent art scoop that Studiosavant somehow didn't get to first. But, the paper failed to print any images of the sculptures, so at the very least we can do that here. Of course, these won't be the actual pieces on display at the AGA next year. See, these ones are from the National Gallery in D.C., and include the actual wax, plaster, etc. originals that the bronzes were cast from (after Degas had already died). And fortunately, not only does the National Gallery offer free admission every day, they let you take photographs of pretty much whatever you like (except special exhibits), with or without flash (although personally, I can't bring myself to use a flash in a museum, hence the slight blur to the photos). Scoop that, I say!

[Edit: added picture here of a few versions of the most famous of the Degas sculptures.]

Shitload of Smith

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:57:00 +0000

The first image here is from Washington's National Gallery, but the rest are from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.