Robert Graham
dal 13/11/2007 al 8/2/2008
Segnalato da
13/11/2007
Robert Graham
USC Fisher Gallery, Los Angeles
The exhibition reveals a new phase in Robert Graham's exploration of the female figure in drawings, photographs, videos, and sculpture. Artist's interest in capturing movement and animating individual presence has been apparent in even his most restfully posed sculptural nudes.
Body of Work. Drawings, photographs, videos, and sculpture.
The exhibition Robert Graham: Body of Work reveals a new phase in Robert Graham's exploration of the female figure in drawings, photographs, videos, and sculpture.
Los Angeles—Robert Graham: Body of Work features the latest creations of Los Angeles-based artist Robert Graham. The exhibition runs from November 14, 2007 through February 9, 2008 at the University of Southern California’s Fisher Gallery in Los Angeles. Robert Graham: Body of Work is curated by guest curator Peggy Fogelman.
Internationally renowned, Los Angeles-based artist Robert Graham has explored the female figure in drawings, photographs, videos, and, especially, sculpture since the beginning of his career. The USC Fisher Gallery exhibition Body of Work reveals, for the first time in a museum context, a new phase in this exploration. Graham’s interest in capturing movement and animating individual presence has been apparent in even his most restfully posed sculptural nudes.
Conversely, dynamic compositions inspired by dance manifest a deep and abiding concern for anatomical and facial detail that aligns them with still portraiture. In his new works, Graham pushes the depiction of movement to its most abstract form, distilling morphology to its essence and allowing the energy and idiosyncrasy of pose to convey individualism. These nudes, like virtuosic three-dimensional sketches, simultaneously embody the vigorous gesture of both the sculptor and his model.
Graham’s sculptural work began with small wax figures encased in Plexiglas environments suggestive of 1960s California beach culture. At the time, unschooled in figure drawing or human anatomy, Graham worked from photographs and pop imagery culled from magazines and mass media. As he worked directly with live models through the 1970s, Graham’s ability to both observe and record anatomical detail and individualized form increased to the level of exceptional technical virtuosity.
The evolution of Graham’s approach is inextricably linked to his experience with the model in his studio. In Graham’s most recent sculptures the abstracted, torqued figures declare the speed of movement and the artistic energy needed to capture it. Each appendage records not an established pose, but the transition from one taut, muscular thrust to the next, so that movement evolves within the figure as if in slow motion video.
The stylistic transitions that map Graham’s career are inextricably bound to experiments in materials and technique. Graham began producing his statues in bronze in the early 1970s. Traditional lost wax bronze casting requires an intermediary step between the original clay sketch and the final sculpture, via the taking of molds and the execution of a wax casting model that is destroyed in the process.
As smaller models are enlarged to monumental proportions, the transfer and translation of the artist’s original gestures and mark-making in the clay further distance product from prototype. For his newest work, Graham developed a method of building resin sculptures that employs innovative technologies gleaned from industrial and medical engineering. The resulting statues, alternately translucent and glowing like glass paste, or opaque and crystallized like marble, preserve with an unprecedented exactitude the immediacy of the artist’s gesture and the personality of his fingerprint.
About the artist
Robert Graham was born in Mexico City in 1938 and studied at San Jose State College, B.A. (1961-1963) and the San Francisco Art Institute, M.F.A. (1963-1964.) Since 1964, his work has been the subject of over eighty solo exhibitions and two retrospective exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Japan and Mexico. His work is part of many national and international museum collections.
Public installations of sculptures in Los Angeles include the “Dance Door” at the Music Center Plaza; “Fountain Figures I-IV” at the Wells Fargo Plaza; and “Source Figure” at the First Interstate World Tower in downtown; “Dance Columns I and II” at the Franklin Murphy Sculpture Garden and Doumani Sculpture Garden at Rolfe Hall, both at University of California at Los Angeles; “Retrospective Column” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “Torso” on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
Robert Graham designed the “National Medal of Arts,” presented by the President of the United States; “The Spirit of Liberty Award” presented by the People for the American Way; and “The California Governors’ Award for the Arts.”
In 1993, Robert Graham received the ACLU Freedom of Speech Award and the California Governor’s Award for his outstanding contribution to the Arts. In 2003, he received the award of the Commander of Merit of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
He works and lives in Venice, California
Related Events
Women’s Lives and Loves: A Musical Exploration
November 27, 2007 (7:30 PM - 9:00 PM)
USC Fisher Gallery
In conjunction with the exhibition Body of Work: Robert Graham on view at USC Fisher Gallery, pianist Victoria Kirsch and mezzo-soprano Diana Tash explore the female experience through song and opera, focusing on compositions written by and about women.
The Late Style: Implications for the Artist and the Architect
December 6, 2007 (6:00 PM - 8:00 PM)
USC Andrus Gerontology Center -- Leonard Davis Auditorium
Does creative freedom increase with time and artistic maturity? A panel of distinguished artists, including internationally renowned sculptor Robert Graham, Pritzker Prize–winning architect Frank O. Gehry, acclaimed abstract painter Ed Moses and noted collage artist Tony Berlant, will discuss what the idea of a “late style” means in their work. Peggy Fogelman, assistant director and head of education and interpretive programs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, will moderate the discussion. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Body of Work: Robert Graham, on display at the USC Fisher Gallery from November 14 through February 9.
Exhibition Catalogue
The show is accompanied by a catalogue. To order, please contact Fisher Gallery at (213) 740-4561.
Opening 14 november 2007
USC Fisher Gallery
823 Exposition Blvd. 213 Los Angeles
Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 pm; closed Sunday and Monday.
Call (213) 740-4561 or visit http://www.fishergallery.org for more information.
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