joseph scissorhands

Sunday, 14 November 2021

Houseago I Rodin

Thomas Houseago - Lava Mask

"There is in Rodin a very pagan concern for the life-death continuum: clay as a manifestation of life and death. . . . It is a way of reminding us about the complexity of being in a body, of being alive." —Thomas Houseago.

Thomas Houseago - Gold Walking Man and Auguste Rodin - Pierre de Wissant

Another exhibition of three-dimensional art in the capital at the moment. This is one of those exhibitions comparing and contrasting two practitioners past and contemporary of an artistic discipline, in this case sculpture, hoping to form a "dialogue" between their varying styles. The participants here at Gagosian Davies Street are Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), and Thomas Houseago, and the work featured here consists of two very different sculptural styles to that of the hyperrealistic figures of Ron Mueck in my last post. In the main exhibition space Rodin is represented by three elegant, naturalistic, life-sized figures caught in a series of movements ranging from the reposed to the dynamic. There is also a further Rodin statue situated in the garden space of Berkeley Square a short stroll away. All the Rodin sculptures here posess a certain immediacy, tension and yet relaxed, lyrical naturalism, as if captured unawares for a split second in their exertions. Houseago's muscular, hulking, Gold Walking Man, situated in this space seeks to assert himself among the power of the Rodins through sheer scale, force of will and physicality, like Ted Hughes's Iron Man. In contrast to the lyrical bronzes of Rodin, Houseago's stiff, lumpen, muscular, golden man strides assuredly and purposefully, asserting his right to be in the presence of the master Rodin. It is interesting to be able to see the exposed armature infrastructure supporting the Gold Walking Man's bulk. This is a part of Houseago's deliberate, rough hewn, signature visual language. Having negotiated the stand off between these figures in the main room I ventured into the smaller, darkened back room to encounter a series of smaller works by both artists again contrasting the different approaches to their sculptural discipline. Houseago's works here intrigued me greatly especially the pieces in which he used casts of dentures, blending these with found materials such as forks, spoons, glass jars and jewellery. I liked the small talismanic masks of his which look as though they could have been created by earlier cultures. The presence of the larger skull on a plinth in this room I personally think really doesn't do him any favours. Rodin's smaller works in this space are just amazing, justifying his reputation. They are complex and full of movement, especially the sensuous female nude twisting to her right, which is so reminiscent and comparable to the nudes of Michelangelo. Back in the main room there are a series of Houseago masks aligned on the wall which display the influence of Picasso's simple cardboard constructions and larger Cubistic sculptures. They could also have taken their cue from Henry Moore's series of helmeted heads. They are interesting exercises in the arrangement and layering of simple, flattened shapes to create structural three dimensional forms. This was an interesting little show. It suffered however. The small, main exhibition space did both sculptors no favours in that there wasn't enough room to move around the larger sculptures, or stand back and fully appreciate their juxtapositions, volume and space they occupied in relation to each other.

Thomas Houseago - Gold Walking Man, 2021

Auguste Rodin - Aphrodite, grande modèle, 1914

Auguste Rodin - Fils d'Ugolin, sans tête, grande modèle, 1904

Auguste Rodin - Pierre de Wissant, nu monumental sans tête ni mains, 1886

Auguste Rodin - Monument à Whistler – Muse nue, bras coupés (Monument to Whistler – Nude Muse, without Arms, 1908)

Houseago I Rodin

until 18th December

Gagosian

Davies Street

London

W1K

Saturday, 6 November 2021

Ron Mueck: 25 Years of Sculpture 1996-2021

Ron Mueck - Dead Weight, 2021

To Thaddaeus Ropac to catch Ron Mueck's first exhibition with the gallery, a small retrospective survey celebrating his oeuvre of the last twenty five years. The passage of time and its effects on the ageing of the human body are the themes here executed in a hyperrealistic style much like Duane Hanson's work (here). Mueck's sculptures are meditations on the human condition and the cycle of life. They reflect Shakespeare's observations on the seven ages of man from his play As You Like It. They are latter day memento mori reminding us that none shall escape the clutches of the Grim Reaper and that inevitably, we too must die. Scale too is key to much of Mueck's work, whether it be the massive, human face apparently suffering mental health problems, looming out of the gloom of a darkened space, in a piece that looks similar to an earlier self-portrait, the gigantic figures captured in an intimate moment in the autumn of their years lounging under an umbrella at the end of the exhibition, or the small-scale figures of mothers confronting and coping with the harsh realities of the strange aftermath of birth and parenthood. In combination with the scale of Mueck's sculptures are the emotive/psychological responses provoked that we as viewers feel for his subjects. Dead Dad, a depiction of his own father, is the sculpture which propelled him to fame after its inclusion in the Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy, is included here, and has lost none of its capacity to both shock, yet elicit a sense of grief and sympathy to anybody who has felt the loss of a certain loved one. Any desperate, sleep-deprived, new parent will readily identify with Mueck's Woman with Shopping. Although small in scale it leaves a large, powerful impact in its truth, and one can only sympathise with, and feel for this exhausted mother possibly suffering with post-natal depression, physically bearing both the weight of the world in her shopping bags, and the newborn strapped to her chest who desperately searches for recognition, love, and possibily its next feed in its mothers eyes. Her gaze sadly, isn't immediately returned. All of the sculptures whatever their scale are executed and accomplished with the meticulous virtuosity of a master craftsman. A new development in Mueck's work is the use of iron in his latest work Dead Weight, a huge sculpture of a human skull again emphasising and reinforcing the theme of memento mori. What is interesting is that like the sculptor Auguste Rodin (whose works will feature in future posts), Mueck has chosen to leave the seam lines and plugs of the casting process visible, which might perhaps hint at a new development in his work and a departure from the hyperreal style of sculpture which has been his trademark thus far. As well as the physical sculptures themselves Thaddaeus Ropac displays a series of fascinating photographs documenting Mueck at work in his studio showing his working models, drawings and process. The photographs are interesting in that they show the preparatory models in various scales and stages of development. The finished sculptures are so immaculately polished I think it would be a good contrast in future exhibitions of Mueck's work to also present these clay and plaster working models alongside the finished pieces in order to demystify Mueck's processes to visitors. Mueck's art has been met with suspicion from some critics in the art community, possibly because of his commercial art background. I am convinced of his sincerity, though. Mueck is a dispassionate observer, imbuing his sculptures with a strong sense of emotivity, which record observations of the psychological states of the human condition. One only has to look closely at the unglamorous incidental details captured so lovingly in his work, such as the calloused feet on the woman in Couple Under an Umbrella, along with her stretch marks and wrinkled skin. There is also the lined, careworn expressions on the faces of Dark Place, and Woman with Shopping. These details are recorded with the eye of an artist, and executed with a sense of tenderness and compassion of a humanist. The skill and sensibilities of an artist.