Philip Grausman
American, born 1935
Victoria 1991–2000; cast 2007
Stainless steel, 14 X 6 1/2 X 7 1/2 ft., edition of 3
Museum purchase with the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts
2008.6
© Philip Grausman 2011, Courtesy of Crosby Coughlin Fine Art
Who is Victoria?
A Santa Fe sculptor and friend of the artist, Victoria Davila modeled for Grausman when he originally made this head in fiberglass, between 1991 and 2000. He then cast a small model in stainless steel; this small version appears in the museum’s Sculpture Gallery in the Stieren Center for Exhibitions. Based on the model, the McNay commissioned Grausman to make the large outdoor sculpture.
Click here to see a video of this sculpturebeing installed on the McNay grounds.
About Philip Grausman
Born in New York City, Philip Grausman obtained a BA in art history from Syracuse University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Grausman has also received numerous grants and awards for his figurative sculptures, including the prestigious Prix de Rome Fellowship in Sculpture at the American Academy in Rome (1962–1965). From 1972 to 2008, Grausman served on the faculty of Yale University as Critic of Architectural Drawing in the Graduate School of Architecture.
The sculptor’s early work focused on natural forms representing buds and seeds, which led him to the underlying form of the human head. Grausman focuses on sculptural portraits stripped to their essence, emphasizing structure and contours in modeling his faces. The shiny gray stainless steel surface adds to this sculpture’s streamlined but powerful presence.
Critic Michael Brenson wrote in the New York Times in 1987, “Grausman has described his heads as landscapes, and indeed his aluminum seems to sprout and swell like trees and fruit. In looking for a way of extending the tradition of sculpture from nature, he has found a surprising path.”
What to Look For
- Colossal solid stainless steel, female head
- Elegant, elongated, industrial, polished, serene, and streamlined
- Silently welcoming at 14 feet high
- The largest of Philip Grausman’s works when it was made
- Idealized, universal qualities of a woman’s head.
- Recalls monuments in Egypt, Greece, Mexico, Rome, Turkey, and other cultures
Tony Cragg
British, born 1949
Hole Heads 2005
Bronze, 39 x 43 x 47 in.
Museum purchase with the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts
2006.76
© 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
About Tony Cragg
Born in Liverpool, England, Tony Cragg earned a BA from the Wimbledon School of Art and an MA from London’s Royal College of Art, where he studied sculpture. He then moved to Germany, where he lives, has his studio, and teaches at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf.
Cragg’s sculptural materials range from found objects, plastic, glass, and plaster to the more traditional media of marble and bronze. In the 1970s, Cragg made relief sculptures, on the wall or the floor, with found objects. In 1988 he won the Great Britain’s Turner Prize and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale.
Art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote in the Village Voice in 1988 about Cragg’s work, “Each Cragg work confidently awaits a home in some particular room or outdoor space, to which it will impart civilized value with the spiritual equivalent of perpetual motion.”
Tony Cragg’s sculptures are in museum collections worldwide; he has won
international acclaim and continues to experiment with media and forms. Recent works, both figurative and abstract, demonstrate Craig’s interest in surface quality and how that can be manipulated. The perforated surface and layered composition of Hole Heads reveal his dialogue between interior and exterior.
What to Look For
- Circular holes perforating the entire surface
- Three large, adjoining faces
- A single crown of hair and the beginning of a neck
- Smooth, curving planes of the faces
- Rough surfaces on the hair, jagged edges around the bottom
- Inner bronze cylinder, also with holes
Alexander Liberman
American, born Russia, 1912–1999
Ascent 1970
Painted steel, 16 x 20 x 25 ft.
Museum purchase with the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts
2005.1
© Liberman Art Partners 2011
How Liberman Made It
First the artist made simple preliminary sketches of Ascent, which is one of five of Liberman’s large metal sculptures that incorporate a crushed element. Then, Wm. Layman & Sons of Warren, Connecticut, fabricated the sculptureat the artist’s studio/farm in Warren. Liberman supervised and participated in the fabrication, placing one of the large metal cylinders against a tree and ramming it with a bulldozer. Finally the sculpture was painted with a durable red-orange exterior automotive paint to conceal the industrial scrap metal used to make it.
About Alexander Liberman
Born in Kiev, Russia, Alexander Liberman began his studies of art and architecture in Paris in the late 1920s. At the age of 19, he was designing covers for Vu magazine. In 1940, like many artists, he left Nazi-occupied France and arrived in New York City where he continued working in the magazine industry at Vogue, eventually becoming editorial director for all Condé Nast publications (1960–1994).
In the U.S., Liberman began making abstract works on aluminum and Masonite with high-gloss enamel paint, continuing in the 1950s with hardedge geometric paintings and tabletop sculptures. In 1963 he made assemblages out of junk metal, old farm machinery, and steel boilers; in 1966 he started using red paint, his signature color for large public works. Influenced by the scale, composition, and theatricality of European Baroque sculpture, Liberman created sculptures using gasoline storage tanks and other industrial junk metal from the 1970s to the end of his career.
What to Look For
- Different views from every side
- Rigid geometric shapes with horizontals and verticals
- Thrusting diagonals intersecting with horizontals and verticals
- Large cylindrical shapes, one seems to be crushed by a diagonal plane
- Dynamic energy.
George Rickey
American, 1907–2002
Horizontal Column of Five Squares Excentric II 1994
Stainless steel, 71 1/2 x 134 in.
Museum purchase with the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts
1997.63
Art © Estate of George Rickey/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
How it Works
Weighted and finely balanced, the forms float above the reflecting pond, moved by the slightest air current and gravity. Rickey used ball bearings, physics, sun, weights, and wind to create this sculpture. No motors!
About George Rickey
Born in South Bend, Indiana, American kinetic sculptor George Rickey received his initial art training through evening classes in drawing and painting while working on a BA from Balliol College in Oxford, England, and teaching English at the Gardiner School in Paris. In his early 20s, he returned to the U.S., where he taught, maintained a studio, and exhibited his paintings. His first solo exhibition of paintings was at the Denver Art Museum in 1935.
While serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps (1942–1945), he made his first mobile sculptures. Returning to New York, Rickey studied art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts under the GI Bill and then taught at various U.S. universities.
Inspired by the sculptures of David Smith––whom he met at Indiana University in Bloomington––and by Alexander Calder’s mobiles, Rickey applied the aerodynamic principles and mechanical skills learned in the military, along with his childhood sailing experiences, to use wind effects and gravity into his sculptures. While other kinetic sculptors turned to mechanical technology in their moving works of art, Rickey worked into his 90s, making lightweight, delicately balanced, wind-activated sculptures. More than 300 of his works are on view at airports, museums, universities, and urban centers around the world.
What to Look For
- Four three-dimensional square solids of stainless steel gently
- A fifth central square solid
- Highly polished surfaces
- Reflections of sky and water in the pond and on the squares
- Rotating, tumbling around, mesmerizing motion
- Word excentric in the title, which Rickey invented
- Combines Latin ex centrum, from the center
- With English eccentric, departing from a recognized or established norm
Joel Shapiro
American, born 1941
Untitled 2000
Painted aluminum, 58 1/2 x 31 1/2 x 87 in.
Museum purchase with the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts
2001.9
© 2011 Joel Shapiro / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
About Joel Shapiro
Born in New York City, Joel Shapiro received both a BA and an MA from New York University (NYU). The son of scientists who were also interested in art, Shapiro took art classes as a child, considering it "fun," but not a potential career. He attended college, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts, intending to becoming a physician. After graduation he spent two years in the Peace Corps in India, and there he decided to become an artist. Returning to New York, Shapiro rented a studio and registered for graduate work at NYU.
In 1969––the year he received his graduate degree––Shapiro’s work appeared in Anti-Illusion: Procedure / Material at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He also began to exhibit sculpture and drawings at the Paula Cooper Gallery, and had his first solo exhibition there in 1970. He soon won critical acclaim for his small plaster, metal, or wooden objects that had an implied human presence, such as sculptures of miniature boats, chars, coffins, and houses. The human form emerged by the late 1970s in Shapiro’s chunky wooden constructions, further investigations of abstraction. From these small sculptures, large cast bronze or aluminum works evolved, often retaining the texture of the wood grain.
In Shapiro’s human-size sculptures, he does not add extraneous details to the basic geometric form, making works devoid of gender identity, narrative, or context. As his blue painted aluminum sculpture at the McNay demonstrates, the artist has long managed to work comfortably with both abstraction and figuration.
Joel Shapiro has done projects for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and has participated in numerous exhibitions including the Whitney Biennials.
What to Look For
- Blue geometric sculpture defying gravity
- Human figure marching down a green granite wall
- Shadows cast by the sculpture
- Outside view, as well as inside perspectives from two different levels
Kiki Smith
American, born 1954
Woman and Sheep 2009
Bronze, 18 x 81½ x 51 in. (woman); 30¾ x 41⅞ x 15 in. (sheep)
Museum purchase with the Russell Hill Rogers Fund for the Arts
2010.123
About Kiki Smith
Born in Nuremberg, Germany, and raised in South Orange, New Jersey, Kiki Smith studied at Hartford Art School, Connecticut; Lower East Side Printshop; Fashion Institute of Technology; and the Center for Book Arts, the last three all in New York. She received the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in 2000.
Known for figurative subjects that explore narrative, mythology, folklore, and religion, Smith is also interested in the roles of women and their relationships to nature. In Women and Sheep and other sculptures, she uses the body as a means of expression. This approach relates Smith’s work to the history of expressive distortion of figures in sculpture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, begun by Auguste Rodin (1840–1917).
Kiki Smith is the daughter of opera singer Jane Lawrence and Minimalist sculptor Tony Smith, whose monumental black, geometric work Asteriskos (1968) appears on the McNay’s grounds.
What to Look For and Think About
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Different views from each side of the two figures
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Surfaces that appear rough as well as surfaces that are smooth
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Proportion and distortion in the woman’s body; notice head, arms, hands, legs, feet
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Delicate details such as ears, eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips, fingernails, toenails
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The story behind Woman and Sheep
