ARTISTS
Faces and Figures
Skarstedt is pleased to present Faces and Figures, a group exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and photographs demonstrating the many ways in which the components of artist, model, and representation have been configured and reconfigured from the mid-twentieth-century to present.
Gazing upward, the slender Eli Lotar (photographer and frequent sitter for Alberto Giacometti) is depicted in the famed sculptor鈥檚 final work, Buste d鈥檋omme assis (Lotar III). A sculptor of faces, figures, and gestures, Giacometti typifies this tripartite of artist, model and representation within the posthumously cast bronze. As if a kneeling Egyptian pharaoh, the severe and somber Lotar sits resolutely, the once malleable pinches and chasms of clay articulating the artist鈥檚 last vision.
A fascination with flesh and figure, de Kooning, strongly influenced by Giacometti 鈥� likely having seen the sculptor鈥檚 work as early as 1948 in the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York 鈥� incorporated the same modes of perspectival shifts, space and texture. In her analysis of de Kooning in relation to Giacometti, art historian Rosalind Krauss writes, 鈥淒e Kooning鈥檚 own Head #3 (1973), with its rugged surface and incompatible points of view echoes what Sartre had written about the presence of the sculptor as the ambient point of view鈥� (Krauss, Willem de Kooning Nonstop: Cherchez la Femme, 2016, p. 52). Krauss referencing Jean-Paul Sartre鈥檚 essay on this same 1948 exhibition for Giacometti, connects not only the two artist鈥檚 centrality on the human figure, but even more so in the way they are represented spatially and conceptually.
This spatial evaluation of both faces and figures was masterfully upturned by Picasso 鈥� Le Peintre, 6 February 68 颅champions the spirit of a musketeer, utilizing the model of a 17th century cavalier to transform himself into this image of a valiant painter. Picasso engages simultaneously with the past and present and embodies all three components of artist, model, and representation, stating, 鈥渕ovement of the painting, the dramatic effort from one vision to the next, even if the effort is not carried through. I have reached the stage where the movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself鈥� (Picasso in K. Gallwitz, Picasso Laureatus, 1971, p. 166).
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Skarstedt is pleased to present Faces and Figures, a group exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and photographs demonstrating the many ways in which the components of artist, model, and representation have been configured and reconfigured from the mid-twentieth-century to present.
Gazing upward, the slender Eli Lotar (photographer and frequent sitter for Alberto Giacometti) is depicted in the famed sculptor鈥檚 final work, Buste d鈥檋omme assis (Lotar III). A sculptor of faces, figures, and gestures, Giacometti typifies this tripartite of artist, model and representation within the posthumously cast bronze. As if a kneeling Egyptian pharaoh, the severe and somber Lotar sits resolutely, the once malleable pinches and chasms of clay articulating the artist鈥檚 last vision.
A fascination with flesh and figure, de Kooning, strongly influenced by Giacometti 鈥� likely having seen the sculptor鈥檚 work as early as 1948 in the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York 鈥� incorporated the same modes of perspectival shifts, space and texture. In her analysis of de Kooning in relation to Giacometti, art historian Rosalind Krauss writes, 鈥淒e Kooning鈥檚 own Head #3 (1973), with its rugged surface and incompatible points of view echoes what Sartre had written about the presence of the sculptor as the ambient point of view鈥� (Krauss, Willem de Kooning Nonstop: Cherchez la Femme, 2016, p. 52). Krauss referencing Jean-Paul Sartre鈥檚 essay on this same 1948 exhibition for Giacometti, connects not only the two artist鈥檚 centrality on the human figure, but even more so in the way they are represented spatially and conceptually.
This spatial evaluation of both faces and figures was masterfully upturned by Picasso 鈥� Le Peintre, 6 February 68 颅champions the spirit of a musketeer, utilizing the model of a 17th century cavalier to transform himself into this image of a valiant painter. Picasso engages simultaneously with the past and present and embodies all three components of artist, model, and representation, stating, 鈥渕ovement of the painting, the dramatic effort from one vision to the next, even if the effort is not carried through. I have reached the stage where the movement of my thought interests me more than the thought itself鈥� (Picasso in K. Gallwitz, Picasso Laureatus, 1971, p. 166).
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Five of the ten portrait paintings in this Francis Bacon exhibition, 鈥淔aces & Figures,鈥� were studies, indicating that they may have been works in progress.
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