This past weekend, ceramic sculptor Kathy Ruttenberg offered a preview of her new exhibition, Private Myths / Public Dreams, at New York City’s Francis M. Naumann Fine Art gallery.
An appreciation of Walker’s work and craft.
The artist has set up a new sculpture in Midtown.
In 1971, Chris Burden asked an acquaintance to shoot at him with a rifle.
Yesterday, saw the opening of the exhibit César in Context at the Luxembourg and Dayan gallery on 77th and Park Avenue, a space tall but narrow with several floors.
César in the context of his contemporaries is evocative of a slightly stranger, more horror-esque aura than his whimsy usually allowed for. Certainly the colors are dark overall, earthy tones ranging from red to a pitch black best seen in Robert Motherwell’s Untitled (Elegy), shadowy tar black set against unassuming canvas. Cesar’s works of compression are fun, as art reusing other materials often feels. The three dimensionality of many of the projects gives an open atmosphere to the almost windowless gallery- certainly this exhibit is not one to be seen alone.
Walking through the gallery, it is almost like walking through someone’s very weird house. With peculiar taste in art. Where else but an eccentric old man’s mansion would you find César’s Scorpion? At one point there is a bow of crinoline- but in actuality it’s bronze and the title to the piece is meaningless (Armstrong Siddeley by Lynda Benglis). But the real beauty lies on the third floor, in the front section. While I nicknamed it “the limb room”, in actuality it contains more than realistic limbs- in one case an entire woman.
Classical Allusion by John de Andrea is a masterpiece. When I first caught a glimpse, it was as though an intruder had entered at random and draped herself, nude, across a Greco-Roman marble bust. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that’s not the case…or does it? The uncanny valley certainly springs to mind. It really must be seen in person to grasp the full effect.
Looking for the Césarian inspiring piece, one alights upon the thumb, or Pouce. A piece in resin with the dirt of age only augmenting its realism, it certainly leads one to draw comparisons between a real thumb (one’s own) and it. Clearly this experimentation with realism was a fascination in César’s time.
All in all, the exhibit is marvelous not just as a tribute to César “in context” per se, but also as a celebration of artists around the same time period who may not have received as much acclaim. A must-see exhibit, it truly boggles the mind and eyes- and you don’t have to be European to “get it”.