by Julie Schauer | Feb 13, 2016 | Ceramics, Contemporary Art, Eva Zeisel, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Industrial Design, Isamu Noguchi, Karen Karnes, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Ruth Asawa, Surrealism
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Isamu Noguchi, Trinity, 1945, Gregory, 1948, Strange Bird (To the Sunflower)
Photo taken from the Hirshhorn’s Facebook page |
Biomorphic and anthropomorphic themes run through quite a few exhibitions of modern artists in Washington at the moment. The Hirshhorn’s Marvelous Objects: Surrealist Sculpture from Paris to New York has several of the abstract, biomorphic Surrealists such as Miro and Calder. The wonderful exhibition will come to a close after this weekend.
Isamu Noguchi’s many sculptures that are part of Marvelous Objects deal with an unexpected part of the artist’s life and work. Noguchi was interned in a prison camp in Arizona for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Whatever the horrors of his experience, he dealt with it as an artist does — making art and using creativity to express the experience by transforming it.
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| Isamu Noguchi, Lunar Landscape, 1944 |
Lunar landscape comes from immediately after this difficult time period. The artist explained, “The memory of Arizona was like that of the moon… a moonscape of the mind…Not given the actual space of freedom, one makes its equivalent — an illusion within the confines of a room or a box — where imagination may roam, to the further limits of possibility and to the moon and beyond.” It’s like taking tragedy and turning it into magic.
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| Strange Bird (To the Sunflower), 1945 Noguchi Museum, NY |
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The most interesting piece from this period is Strange Bird (To the Sunflower), 1945. It is pictured here 2x — on top photo, right side, and from a different angle on the left, from a photo in the Noguchi Museum. Between 1945 and 1948, Noguchi made a series of fantastic hybrid creatures that he called memories of humanity “transfigurative archetypes and magical distillations.” Yet the simplicity and the Zen quality I expect to see in his work is gone from this time of his life.
From the beginning of time, “humans have wanted a unifying vision by which to see the chaos of our world. Artists fulfill this role,” said Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto.
I’m reminded of the ancient Greeks who created satyrs and centaurs to deal with their animal nature. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there’s a small Greek sculpture of a man and centaur from about 750 BCE, the Geometric period. The man confronting the centaur seems to be taming him or subduing his own animal nature. Like Noguchi’s sculpture, it has hybrid forms and angularity, but it’s made of bronze. Noguchi’s sculpture is of smooth green slate, which gives it much of its beauty and polish.
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| Man and Centaur, bronze, 4-3/4″ mid-8th century BCE Metropolitan Museum |
Noguchi was a landscape architect as well as a sculptor. When designing gardens, he rarely used sculpture other than his own. Yet he bought garden seats by ceramicist Karen Karnes. A pair of these benches by Karnes are now on display at the National Museum for Women in the Arts’ exhibition of design visionaries. Looking closely, one sees how she used flattened, hand-rolled coils of clay to build her chairs. The craftsmanship is superb. It’s easy to see how her aesthetic fit into Noguchi’s refined vision of nature.
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| Karen Karnes, Garden seats, ceramic, from the Museum of Arts in Design, now at NMWA |
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Copyright Julie Schauer 2010-2016
by admin | Jul 26, 2012 | 19th Century Art, Architecture, Ceramics, Cities, Gaudi
The rich and fertile imagination of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) is seen all over the city of Barcelona. Gaudí was a part of Modernista in Barcelona, a Romantic design movement related to Art Nouveau His curved lines and organic shapes were probably inspirations to the Surrealist painters from Catalonia, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí.
Two homes at the entry to Parc Güell are sometimes described as Hansel and Gretl Houses
Gaudí designed a expansive public park in Barcelona, Parc Güell, originally to be like English gardens and to include a housing development which did not sell. His curves and points are a delight to explore, as I did in a visit several years ago. The colorful lizard tiles adorning a huge staircase doubles as a fountain. There are several pavilions, gates, curving walls and benches. The Gaudí House Museum, where the architect once lived,
is also in this park.
Gaudí worked consistently on La Sagrada Familia from 1883 until his death, even living in a room within the building. It has been taking more than 130 years to build and is expected to be completed by by 2026–a hundred years after his death. When I was there 7 years ago, much of the exterior shell was done. In the end, it will have 18 towers and will rise 568 feet (170 meters) high. Its style combines the Gothic style with curvilinear Art Nouveau forms.
Gaudí was not only a great sculptural designer, but he was a genius of mathematical calculations. He designed pointed arches for the Sagrada Familia, as in the Gothic style, but he figured out how to do it without the need for buttresses. A modern computer program was able to determine that Gaudí arches are in the shape of parabolas.
Gaudi’s apartment buildings are fascinating for their shapes. The Casa Milà, above, is said to imitate the waves of the sea, but locals have nicknamed it “La Pedrera,” (the quarry). Nature is the major inspiration.
There is no better place to explore the fertile imagination of Antonio Gaudí then by looking from the rooftops. Whimsical biomorphic shapes at Casa Milà actually hide the building’s utilities (pipes and ductwork) sculptural and cast iron designs. The rooftop of Casa Milà becomes like a sculptured landscape to climb up, down, around and explore. Torre Agbar, the city’s newest architectural icon by Jean Nouvel, is visible in the distance from inside an arch on top of that roof.
Whimsical faces, left, are vent covers pointing into the sky from the roof Casa Milà in Barcelona, perhaps Gaudí’s most famous apartment building, left.
Gaudi’s animation continues in another apartment building, Casa Batlló, below, where the balconies form masks……..Casa Batlló has a rich surface of tiles, multicolored on the facade, but shaped like the scales of a dragon on the roof. Next door is Casa Amatller, by modernista architect Puig i Cadafalch.
When lit at night, Casa Batlló’s roof forms the body of a dragon, while a cross-shaped tower suggests the triumph of St. George over the dragon, or a victory of the cross over death and sin.
by Julie Schauer | Jun 8, 2010 | Baroque Art, Ceramics, Sicily
In the hills of central Sicily the Cathedral of Caltagirone–its dome covered with ceramic tiles–is just one the many wonders in this city of colorful tile (Baroque and Art Nouveau buildings, too). Ceramics everywhere…….I resisted the temptation to buy more pottery (my house has enough and there’s no more room), except one small putto, because I can look at these beautiful photos and remember how it felt to be there.
The green pinecone is a prominent symbol in this region. It reminds me of the pineapples in Williamsburg.
A stroll through the local park reveal planters, light fixtures, fences in a variety of colors. The common colors for the tiles are blue, green, yellow and orange, in an endless variety of creative patterns. Figural designs and shapes are thoroughly Italian, especially with the masks, but some geometric designs in the tiles hint of an Arabic background.
Nearby is a ceramics museum. Scalloped arches are an Islamic feature. The town’s name comes from the Arab “kalat” meaning castle and “geron” meanting caves. Arabs or Saracens ruled Sicily from the 9th-11th centuries, contributed much to the local pottery industry before the Normans came. Like so many parts of medieval Sicily, the Arab-Norman genius combined to form a marvelous craftsmanship.
Then in the 17th an Italian style came on withstrong force in its Baroque phase, as on the steps below built in 1606.
Thanks to Mark for the photos immediately above and below.
Each of the 142 steps of the Scala Monte Santa Maria del Monte has a different ceramic tile design. Today ceramic shops line the streets at the foot of the steps, and its a particularly good place to buy dinnerware, or ceramic figurines. 
Even the Bridge of San Francesco is patterned with Majolica tiles
Copyright Julie Schauer 2010-2016
by admin | Jun 8, 2010 | Ceramics, Sicily
In the hills of central Sicily the Cathedral of Caltagirone–its dome covered with ceramic tiles–is just one the many wonders in this city of colorful tile (Baroque and Art Nouveau buildings, too). Ceramics everywhere…….I resisted the temptation to buy more pottery (my house has enough and there’s no more room), except one small putto, because I can look at these beautiful photos and remember how it felt to be there.
The green pinecone is a prominent symbol in this region. It reminds me of the pineapples in Williamsburg.
A stroll through the local park reveal planters, light fixtures, fences in a variety of colors. The common colors for the tiles are blue, green, yellow and orange, in an endless variety of creative patterns. Figural designs and shapes are thoroughly Italian, especially with the masks, but some geometric designs in the tiles hint of an Arabic background.
Nearby is a ceramics museum. Scalloped arches are an Islamic feature. The town’s name comes from the Arab “kalat” meaning castle and “geron” meanting caves. Arabs or Saracens ruled Sicily from the 9th-11th centuries, contributed much to the local pottery industry before the Normans came. Like so many parts of medieval Sicily, the Arab-Norman genius combined to form a marvelous craftsmanship.
Then in the 17th an Italian style came on with
strong force in its Baroque phase, as on the steps below built in 1606.
Thanks to Mark for the photos immediately above and below.
Each of the 142 steps of the Scala Monte Santa Maria del Monte has a different ceramic tile design. Today ceramic shops line the streets at the foot of the steps, and its a particularly good place to buy dinnerware, or ceramic figurines. Even the Bridge of San Francesco is patterned with Majolica tiles
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