Tag: sculpture

Ken Unsworth

Ken Unsworth, “Suspended Stone Circle II”, Wire and Stones

Ken Unsworth came to prominence as a sculptor in the 1970s, when he combined performance or body art with highly conceptual sculptural forms. Some of these performances, in particular ‘Five secular settings for sculpture as ritual’, involved using his own body as a kind of minimalist sculpture. In one, he posed spread-eagle on the wall, held aloft by a pole between his shoulder blades in a visual recreation of Richard Serra’s lead prop piece now held in the National Gallery of Australia collection in Canberra.

Unsworth’s art is often ephemeral, surviving only in the memory of those who once saw it or in rumours of that memory, or sometimes as photographs or scratchy old videos. Like Joseph Beuys, whose work Unsworth passionately admires, his art is full of apparent contradictions. He reworks the great sagas of life and death while shaking the staff of a jester and yet he has created remarkable and enduring monumental sculptures. He is admired by formalists for his sculpture and for the rigorous logic of propped or suspended stones, while others respond to the expressionism of the paintings and the symbolist theatricality of his kinetic installations.

In many of his early body art pieces, Unsworth held his body in suspension as if levitating between consciousness and unconsciousness, between the material world and the immaterial. The figure seems trapped, pinioned or bound. These works are not only about equilibrium, balance and formal relations; they are also violent and claustrophobic experiences and many of his sculptures continue this theme. ‘Suspended stone circle II’ is one of his levitation works with 103 river stones each weighing around 15 kilograms held in place by three wires tied to three rings secured to the ceiling structure. The stones form a suspended disc, with each one held as if in a force field. The stones are hung so that their centre of gravity falls exactly on the central axis of the disc and each stone is equidistant from its neighbours. The three sets of wires create three cones, suggesting the force field which they literally constitute.

Louise Nevelson

 

Louise Nevelson, “New Continent”, 1962, Painted Wood, 197.5 x 309.2 x 25.7 cm, Saint Louis Art Museum

Louise Nevelson, “Big Black”, 1962, Painted Wood, 274.9 x 319.5 x 30.5 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Louise Nevelson’s artwork began as tabletop collages of found wood, then grew through wall sculptures before metamorphosing into complete environments. She began her work with the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. After leaving the WPA, Nevelson incorporated European cubism and surrealism into her work. This, combined with her personal vision and experience, earned her a prominent position in America’s avant-garde art world of the 1950s and 1960s.

Born Leah Berliawsky in Pereyaslav, fifty miles southeast of Kiev in 1899, Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Her family emigrated to Rockland, Maine in 1905. Isolated in her early years from the other two dozen Jewish families in the town, Nevelson excelled in her high school’s art courses and wanted to attend, upon her graduation in 1918, the Pratt Institute in New York. Her plans changed with her marriage to wealthy businessman Charles Nevelson; the couple moved to 300 Central Park West in New York City. 

After giving birth to her only son Myron Irving in 1922, Nevelson embarked on an increasingly bohemian lifestyle, in which she explored Eastern religious movements and spiritualism. She began art classes under painter and printmaker Kenneth Hayes Miller and master of drawing and educator Kimon Nicolaides at the Art Students League. Nevelson also worked in theater under the tutelage of  stage and screen actress Norina Matchabelli, who acted under the stage name of Maria Carmi.  In 1924, the Nevelson family moved to Mount Vernon, New York, a move which parted Louise Nevelson from her city life and its artistic environment. Not willing to be just a socialite wife, she separated from her husband during the winter of 1932 and later divorced him in 1941.

In 1931 Louise Nevelson sent her son to live with family and traveled to Europe. Staying in Munich, she studied with painter Hans Hofmann, who became a pioneer in abstract expressionism. There Nevelson found the element of cubism that would become her guiding light: the structuring of abstract compositional elements within a geometric grid that brought order to seeming chaos. Upon her return to America, she moved into her own house on East 30th Street in Manhattan and in 1935 had her first exhibition, a collection of small semi-abstract figures modeled in clay. Nevelson convinced gallery owner Karl Nierendorf in 1941 to act as her representative which resulted in four solo exhibitions of her work at his gallery.

In the 1940s, Nevelson began producing Cubist figure studies in stone, bronze, terra cotta, and wood. Influenced by the monumental totemic sculptures she encountered on Mayan culture trips to Mexico, Nevelson began to work on a larger scale in her own work, creating sculptures that encompassed the viewer. Her work began to be acquired by institutions in New York City such as the Whitney and Brooklyn Museums and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In 1958, Nevelson joine the Martha Jackson Gallery, where she was guaranteed income and became financially secure. That year, she was photographed and featured on the cover of Life magazine. 

Louise Nevelson had her first solo-woman show in Europe in 1960 at the Galerie Daniel Cordier in Paris. In the 1960s she designed works for the Jewish Museum in New York, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan. For her 1962 work “New Continent”, Louise Nevelson assembled found architectural elements such as chair legs, balusters, and moldings within the thirty-six wooden compartments of her work and then painted the construction white. She juxtaposed the geometric grid of the boxes with a lyrical arrangement of curves, textures, light, and shadow. The urban environment of Manhattan provided the artist with the discarded objects that were the building blocks of her sculptural practice.

In the 1970s, Nevelson began to work with the medium of Cor-Ten steel, a durable metal that rusts on the exterior but retains its internal integrity. She designed numerous monumental outdoor works, including the  1963 Cor-Ten steel “Atmosphere and Environment X”. In 1973, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis curated a major exhibition of Nevelson’s work which traveled the country for two years. In 1978, a small plot in lower Manhattan was renamed Louise Nevelson Square in her honor; seven tree-shaped monumental steel pieces were installed there by the artist.

Louise Nevelson died on April 17, 1988, at her home in New York City. In 1994, the Nevelson-Berliawsky Gallery of 20th Century Art opened at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Nevelson’s hometown of Rockland, Maine.

Second Insert Image: Louise Nevelson, “East Landscape”, circa 1955, Aquatint and Etching with hand-Coloring in Watercolor, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Louise Nevelson, “Dircus Wagon”, Aquatint and Etching with Hand-Coloring in Watercolor, circa 1955, Private Collection

1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom

The Round Door Rolls: 1925 Rolls-Royce Phantom I Jonckheere Coupe

Custom coachbuilding of the 1920s and 1930s was the ultimate form of self-expression for the rich and famous. Whether it was a Waterhouse-bodied Packard, a Figoni & Falaschi-bodied Delahaye or a Murphy-bodied Duesenberg, the affluent could essentially own a one-of-a-kind vehicle. Each of these famous coachbuilders was known for their specialized workmanship and was commissioned to build custom bodies over the years. Conversely, a company more accustomed to clothing buses and trucks with their commercial styling wouldn’t be the typical choice to build the coachwork for a Rolls-Royce, yet Jonckheere Carrossiers of Belgium did just that when they re-bodied a 1925 Phantom I with what could arguably be considered the most ominous Rolls-Royce coachwork ever created.

In May of 1925, Rolls-Royce launched the New Phantom (today noted as the Phantom I) to replace the 40/50 model, which was from then on referred to as the Silver Ghost. Beginning its life with a stately Hooper Cabriolet body, this particular Phantom I was never delivered to its original purchaser in Detroit, after a last minute change of opinion. Instead it was re-sold as new to the Raja of Nanpara. It left northern India and passed through several more owners before making its way to Belgium in 1932. Two years later the Hooper Cabriolet found itself in the Jonckheere shops undergoing an extensive makeover.

In the early 1930s very few designers had considered (or dared) to modify the traditional Rolls-Royce vertical grill but that alteration became essential to Jonckheere achieving a more streamlined profile for the Phantom’s new body. Bullet-shaped headlights, flowing fenders, and a long vertical tailfin down the boot lid finish off the sleek contours. As Figoni experimented with oval doors, Jonckheere went with unique, large round doors which operate flawlessly and allow passengers into either row of seating. As attractive as round doors may seem, they did however present an issue for operating windows. The solution was to fabricate a two piece window that simultaneously split like scissors down into the door. At nearly 20 feet in length, it could very well be the largest 2-door coupe in existence. Unfortunately a few years later, the Jonckheere records were destroyed in a fire and it remains unknown who commissioned or designed this one-off masterpiece.

Leonora Carrington

Sculptures by Leonora Carrington

Leonora Carrington established herself as both a key figure in the Surrealist movement and an artist of remarkable individuality. Her biography is colorful, including a romance with the older artist Max Ernst, an escape from the Nazis during World War II, mental illness, and expatriate life in Mexico.

In her art, her dreamlike, often highly detailed compositions of fantastical creatures in otherworldly settings are based on an intensely personal symbolism. The artist herself preferred not to explain this private visual language to others. However, themes of metamorphosis and magic, as well as frequent whimsy, have given her art an enduring appeal

Carrington shared the Surrealists’ keen interest in the unconscious mind and dream imagery. To these ideas she added her own unique blend of cultural influences, including Celtic literature, Renaissance painting, Central American folk art, medieval alchemy, and Jungian psychology.

“I didn’t have time to be anyone’s muse… I was too busy rebelling against my family and learning to be an artist.”- Leonora Carrington

The Borghese Ares

The Borghese Ares (Mars), Roman Imperial Era, 238.8 cm, Musee du Louvre, Paris, France

The Borghese Ares is a Roman marble statue of the Imperial Era of the first or second century AD. Standing at 238.8 cn (7 feet) tall, it is identifiable as the Roman god Ares by the helmet and the ankle ring given him by his lover Aphrodite. This statue possibly preserves some features of an original work in bronze, now lost, of the fifth century BC. Formerly part of the Borghese collection, this Ares statue was purchased from the collection in 1807 by Emperor Napoleon; it currently is housed at the Musee du Louvre in Paris.

The discovery of artifacts from the ancient Greek cult of Ares, particularly sculptural representations of Ares, is a rare occurrence. Scholars had prviously thought the Borghese Ares might be derived from a statue created by Alcamenes, an Athenian sculptor. This was based on the writings of the  second-century Greek historian Pausanias who stated that Alcamenes had sculpted a statue of Ares later erected on the Athenian Agora, the central public assembly location in the city.

However, as the temple of Ares which Pausanias referenced had only been moved from the Athens suburb of Acharnes and re-sited in the Agora during the reign of Emperor Augustus (27 BC to 14 AD), this a chronological impossibility. Due to this, it is highly unlikely that the Borghese Ares is a copy of Aleamenes’s work but, more likely, a Roman creation copying the style of Neo-Classicism.

Maneki Neko

Maneki Neko, Edo Period, Japan, 8.3 Inches High x 6.3  Wide x 4.3

Maneki Neko beckoned guests and customers into inns and shops. Most were humble creatures and very few early examples exist. Instead of raising a paw to call money like his brethren, this cat tips a right ear, curling it forward in welcome.

This okimono is in the form of a cat with its paw resting on a Shinto shrine bell, the bell articulated to open sideways revealing a compass. The cat is made of cast, cold-chiseled and gilt bronze with inlaid glass eyes; the compass is made of cast, cold-chiseled and gilt bronze with a glass cover. The reverse has holes for pin attachments for a now missing base. This was crafted in the Edo period, 1700 to 1830.

It may be that this feline sculpture beckoned for a dealer in scientific instruments, compasses, telescopes and microscopes. If so, only the metropolis of Edo (now modern Tokyo) would have supported such a specialist shop. Such a merchant would travel to visit feudal daimyo clients, almost the only people with the means to purchase his wares and afford the medium of gilt bronze. They loved surprises and fashionable karakuri or mechanical toys.

Bronze Rabbit Okimono

Artist Unknown, Bronze Rabbit Okimono

Okimono in the form of an alarmed plump rabbit, made of cast and cold chiseled bronze with touches of gilt. This okimono is unsigned. It was probably cast in the late Edo period of Japan (early 19th century).

The bronze and gilding have taken on a warm softness with age. The rabbit is five inches high by four and a half inches long and three inches wide.

Cal Lane

Steel Lace by Cal Lane

New York-based artist Cal Lane turns highly industrial materials like shovels, car parts and oil tanks into delicate lace-patterned works of art. Using a blowtorch, Lane adds a touch of beautiful filigree to the steel objects, producing works that simultaneously hide and expose the gritty material she chooses to work with.

“I like to work as a visual devil’s advocate, using contradiction as a vehicle for finding my way to an empathetic image, an image of opposition that creates a balance – as well as a clash – by comparing and contrasting ideas and materials” , says Lane, who is originally from Victoria, British Columbia.

John Bisbee

John Bisbee: Nail Sculptures

John Bisbee is an American sculptor living and working in Maine. He is an art professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. Bisbee received his B.F.A. from Alfred University and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Bisbee’s work is included in the collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the DeCordova Museum, The Albright-Knox Gallery, the Portland Museum of Art, at Microsoft, and in private collections.

Anek Suwannaphoom

Anek Suwannaphoom, “Big Buddha in Wat Phra Yai Temple”

Wat Phra Yai is a Buddhist temple on Ko Phan, a small island offshore from the northeastern area of Ko Samui, Thailand which is connected to the island by a short causeway.

The Buddha statue depicts Buddha in a state of calm and purity and resolve, having overcome temptation and fear sent at him by Mara, Lord of Illusion. Known as the Mara posture, the left hand rests palm open and up in the statue’s lap, the right hand facing down over the right knee, almost to the ground.

Igor Mitoraj

Head Sculpture by Igor Mitoraj

Igor Mitoraj was a Polish artist born in Oederan, Germany. Having previously worked with terra-cotta and bronze, a trip to Carrara, Italy, in 1979 turned Igor Mitoraj to using marble as his primary medium and in 1983 he set up a studio in Pietrasanta. In 2006, he created the new bronze doors and a statue of John the Baptist for the basilica of Santa Maria deli Angela in Rome.

Mitoraj’s sculptural style is rooted in the classical tradition with its focus on the well modelled torso. However, Mitoraj introduced a port-modern  twist with ostentatiously truncated limbs, emphasising the damage sustained by most genuine classical sculptures. Often his works aim to address the questions of human body, its beauty and fragility as well as deeper aspects of human nature, which as a result of the passing of time undergo degeneration.