WENDELL CASTLE'S ART

WENDELL CASTLE’S ART

by Joan K. Yanni

Caligari Clock

 The art of Wendell Castle has long been a favorite of Gallery visitors and staff. Some of his art is always on view: the Suggestion Box, for example, and the Caligari clock.(1967) Recently his Music Rack (1964) was chosen to be part of the new exhibit, Crafting Modernism. In its place now is Table with Tablecloth, one of Castle’s signature trompe l’oeil works, with both table and tablecloth carved of wood. The clock attracts attention immediately. It is located where the Vanden Brul Pavilion opens into the Forman Gallery. It can’t be missed: it is 92 1/2 inches tall and made of curly cherry veneer, ebony and gold-plated brass. It is painted a vivid blue. How does the clock run? It contains a special West German weight-driven movement that strikes every quarter hour. Three small holes in the back near the top permit winding and setting. Other pieces by Castle in the same area of the Gallery include a walnut Suggestion Box, created in 1972 when Castle was producing furniture in natural, organic forms using a lamination technique. Suggestion Box is tree-like, with a natural wood color and grain. Commissioned by the Gallery, it is a combination of desk and ballot box and includes holders for a pen or pencil and specially-made suggestion cards as well as a slot in which Gallery visitors may insert their suggestions. A tiny hole underneath the front of the top permits the insertion of a nail-like key which, with a push, will open the top to expose the suggestions. For almost 50 years Castle’s work has inspired viewers to look at furniture in a new way. Superbly crafted and often filled with a sense of whimsy, his recent pieces reinterpret ideas about function, form, line, color and mass. His work stands in the worlds of furniture, sculpture and design simultaneously. He is often credited with being the father of the art furniture movement. Wendell Castle was born in Kansas in 1932. In 1958 he received an undergraduate degree in industrial February, March 2012 Page 3 design and in 1961 a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture, both from the University of Kansas. He came to the RIT furniture design department in 1962 and taught there in the RIT School for American Craftsmen until 1969. He stopped making furniture for a time in 1969 and concentrated on large, fiberglass sculpture, two examples of which can be seen near Rochester's Chamber of Commerce and at Marine Midland Bank. In 1970 he moved to SUNY Brockport, then returned to RIT in 1984 as tenured professor and artist-in-residence, a position in which Castle gives critiques and lectures, represents RIT nationally, and continues to create. More than two decades ago Ron Netsky, in an article in "Upstate Magazine” said that Castle’s reputation, “established early and bolstered by every new series he creates, has earned him that greatest of commodities, a license to create whatever he wants, knowing there will be a market for his work." His designs have gone from the organic, to the trompe l'oeil, to the whimsical and classical. In 1980 he opened the Wendell Castle School in Scottsville, NY. His bold and experimental works can be found in the permanent collections of many prestigious institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Art Institute of Chicago. Castle is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including three honorary doctoral degrees, the 1994 “Visionaries of the American Craft Movement,” sponsored by the American Craft Museum, a 1997 Gold Medal from the American Craft council, and the Modernism Design Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2007. His studio is in a renovated bean mill in Scottsville; there he designs and makes drawings which are converted into wood by his staff. Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, McGraw Hill Dictionary of Art, Curatorial archives.

AFTER GRANT WOOD (AMERICAN GOTHIC) by DEVORAH SPERBER

AFTER GRANT WOOD (American Gothic) by Devorah Sperber

By Kitty Jospe

  What do we look for in a work of art? Devorah Sperber provides a novel way of       viewing and thinking with her installation entitled After Grant Wood (American     Gothic) 3 (commissioned by the Memorial Art Gallery with partial funding from

Coats and Clark.) It is one of a vast series of famous paintings she has recreated with spools of thread, suspended upside down, accompanied with a viewing tool which allows an identifiable miniature view of the work right side up.

 Some of you will remember her work After Vermeer in the 2006 exhibit, Extreme Materials, where the raw color of thread (translated by digital pixels to each spool) becomes a recognizable scene, seen through the acrylic spheres. Her Artist’s Statement acknowledges that there is no one truth or reality: “I am interested in the link between art and technology, how the eyes prioritize, and reality as a subjective experience vs. an absolute truth. As a visual artist, I cannot think of a topic more stimulating and yet so basic, than the act of seeing--how the human brain makes sense of the visual world.” -- Devorah Sperber, 2005 (2) Her witty titles, such as Manuf®actured, and a sample of the titles of her solo exhibits, give a sense of her artistic vision: Bifocal, Mirror Universe, Threads of Perception, Iconic Visions, A Sense of Déjà Vu, Clin d’oeil au Louvre, Seeing Things, Pixilated. Group exhibit titles titillate curiosity about how our eye and brain interpret visual stimuli: Brain: the inside story; Eye Spy: playing with perception; Up cycling: recuperating past lives; Beyond Appearances. Sperber first started with painting-like recreations, created by computer-based, color-chartered printouts. This led to exploring a range of materials from faceted beads, Swarovski crystals, and chenille pipe cleaners (to recreate a shag-rug replica of paintings). But why stop there! 18,000 Letraset marker caps arranged on flexible canvas create “Lie like a Rug”(3) where an oriental rug looks crumpled without the viewing tool, and perfectly flat with it. Sperber’s current installation complements the 63rd Rochester Finger Lakes Exhibition. Both shows dare us to suspend belief, and engage us with surprises. Where do you usually find a spool of thread, and how do you use it? By taking 4,392 spools of thread (1 ¾ inches high), suspended on a steel ball chain and hanging apparatus, conventional ideas are challenged by a visual game of spool art which form an upside-down mosaic of a well-known portrait. Most of the visitors who pause in front of this large piece seem to enjoy the puzzle to the eye. It is both within our grasp and not, where rationally, the viewer can imagine the precision of arranging the colors, and yet, intuitively, there is a primitive response to color and form. Just as art has seen many revolutions which challenge traditional and academic ideas about harmony in composition, Sperber takes us to a wild side of the imagination. The imagery is derived from digital photographs that she manipulates and translates into "low-tech" pixels. This labor-intensive work calls to mind the work of Chuck Close, who challenges the boundaries of traditional print making, breaking down a portrait into mini-pictures as discrete and independent September 2011 Page 3 The title (After Grant Wood (American Gothic 3) speaks to both the literal and figurative aspects of this painting, executed by Grant Wood in 1930. Like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the figures in American Gothic have become cultural icons and subject of parody. A booklet near our Sperber installation gives some examples of ways the painting of a dour-faced farmer, his equally grim-faced wife have been the subject of caricature. Not only are faces subject to parody, such as substituting those of President and Mrs.Obama, but also the architecture of the house or clothing, for instance by military fatigues. We can see the power of image and how it enters into our cultural consciousness, whether as advertising gimmick or artist’s wish to shake and change our consciousness. Such art raises the question of what we seek to satisfy our personal as well as culturally-formed sense of aesthetics. Biography Devorah Sperber was born in 1961 and raised in Detroit, Michigan until the age of ten, when she moved to Denver, Colorado. From 1979 to 1981, she attended the Art Institute of Colorado, Denver, and in 1987, she received her BA from Regis University, Colorado. Shortly after graduation, Sperber was asked to include her figurative stone sculptures and related bronze castings in a national exhibition on the Holocaust victim Anne Frank, which helped in the emergence of her career. Although she is based in New York City, her extensive list of exhibits spans the US, Puerto Rico, and international venues such as Paris. (5). I hope you will enjoy consulting her many works by checking on the websites below. There is a powerful assertive force in these astonishing installations that energizes, inspires, refreshes a fragmented part of ourselves, restoring a sense of being part of a connected whole. to further appreciate the variety of thread spool works from 1999 to present, consult: (1) http://www.devorahsperber.com/thread_works_index_html_an d_2x2s/index.html and http://www.devorahsperber.com/installation_views.htm (2) http://www.devorahsperber.com/thread_works_index_htm l_and_2x2s/wood3.html (3) Lie like a rug: http://www.devorahsperber.com/rug_html_pages/index.html http://www.devorahsperber.com/reviews_articles/nytimes_kato nah_10_05.htm Review of "Over + Over," Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, New York, 2005) (4) VW Bus: Shower Power, 2001. http://www.devorahsperber.com/vw_html_pages/index.html (5) photo from March 2011 at the Grand Palais: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amandenoye/5576659945/ (6) http://kidspace.massmoca.org/exhibitions/archive/sperber/ (general article from 2008, and view of the Last Supper) Earlier Works: http://www.devorahsperber.com/more_preview.html WHAT’S UP WHERE: ART

PORTRAIT OF A VENETIAN PATRICIAN

Venetian Patrician

PORTRAIT OF A VENETIAN PATRICIAN

JACOPO TINTORETTO (1518-1594)

(Text and Picture Copyright in 1977 by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester which is not responsible for this publication.)

The letter “M” which is seen on a shield displaying half a crest permits the assumption that the name of the sitter is Marcello, possibly Jacopo Marcello, a member of the magistrature but not a procurator ( as has been proposed), and one of those responsible for the redecoration of the Great Council Hall after the fire of 1577.The older authorities gave this portrait to Jacopo Tintoretto, and the first to challenge this attribution was Paola Rossi, who ascribes it to the artist’s son Domenico and relates it the portrait of Giovanni Paola Contarini  in the Accademia , Venice (no. 1012) which was recorded by Boschini as being by Domenico when in the Procuratia de Supra. However, John H. Maxon considers it to be by Jacopo, dating from ca. 1550 and that the background and possibly the materials might be by an assistant. (68.97)

PORTRAIT OF A BOY OF THE BRACCIFORTE FAMILY

PORTRAIT OF A BOY OF THE BRACCIFORTE FAMILY

Niccolo dell’Abbate, Italian, ca. 1512-1571

(Text and Picture Copyright, 1977 by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester which is not responsible for this publication.)

Girolama Mazzola Bedoli

Susan E. Schilling pointed out that the gilded metal identifies the family of the sitter and that the allegorical winged figure with two long thin trumpets—a symbol of France—is a motif used by the artist on at least one other occasion is a design for a room decoration in France. The portrait was painted in Bologna, where the artist worked from 1547 to 1552. (76.13)

THE JUDGEMENT OF THE EMPEROR OTHO III OF SAXONY

Franco-Flemish, ca 1495

(Text and Picture Copyright in 1977 by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester which is not responsible for this publication.)

The Judgement of the Emperor Otho

The tapestry shows the Emperor Otho of Saxony judging his Queen, who is confronted by the widow of a count she had put to death because he had refrained from responding from her advances. This popular 12^th century is related in the Pantheon by Godfrey of Viterbo, who served as chaplain to three Emperors. He states: “She (the Queen) fell desperately in love with a young count near Modena and promptly declared to him her feelings, for she was in such matters more inclined to ask others than to wait for others to ask her. The Count was as virtuous as he was handsome, and repelled all her offers. The Empress complained to her husband that the count had made love to her and Otho as a credulous man promptly had the alleged culprit’s head cut off! Godfrey of Viterbo continues by saying that the Empress was burned to death by Otho’s orders. These events took place about the end of the 10^th Century. (30.1)

PORTRAITS OF JOHANNES IV AND SIGISMUND

                                    PORTRAITS OF JOHANNES IV AND SIGISMUND, DUKES OF BAVARIA

GERMAN, SWABIAN, CA. 1470

THE VERSO CONTAINS VERSES IN GERMAN AND LATIN

From a manuscript, “Reim-Chronic”

(Text and Picture Copyright in 1977 by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester which is not responsible for this publication.)

               

Portraits of Bavarian Princes

The identity of the figures is established by the names inscribed above each prince and by their shield of alliances. They were the sons of Albrecht III, Duke of Bavaria, whose will they were entrusted to share the government. After Johannes’s death of the plague in 1463, Sigismund (1439-1501) continued to rule to 1467. Further details about the historical background are contained in the full entry in the catalogue, Master Drawings & Prints, William H. Schab Gallery.

Three drawings from the same album, which was broken up in 1935, are in the Print Room, Berlin-Dahlem, and are related to a partially preserved fresco cycle which used to decorate the residence of the Bavarian princes in Munich and of which the remains are in the Bayerische Nationalmuseum. The Frescoes are by the Master of the Polling Panels. (75.128).

ARITHMETIC AND ASTRONOMY

ARITHMETIC AND ASTRONOMY (28.457)

This tapestry is part of a large tapestry representing the Seven Liberal Arts, which, it has been suggested served as added decoration on feast days in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria, Novella, Florence. The same allegorical occur there in the frescoes of the left wall by Andrea de Firenze. In the tapestry the figure of Astronomy is accompanied by Ptolemy and that of Arithmetic by Archimedes. On the latter’s robe are woven, “KHYN,” the name of the designer, from a family of famous tapestry weavers of Tournai. Another fragment, Geometry, probably from the same tapestry, is in the collection of the Grand Lodge Library and Museum of Freemasons’ Hall, London. The border on the Memori al Art Gallery tapestry is a later edition. 

ARITHMETIC AND ASTRONOMY

Flemish, Tournai, ca. 1400

(Text and Picture Copyright in 1977 by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester which is not responsible for this publication.)