Beautiful Beast

by Claire Cushman, MFA 2015

“Artists have a limited amount of studio time, so we have to be selective about which shows to see,” says Peter Drake, Academy Dean and curator of Beautiful Beast.

“I envision going to shows as part of an artist’s studio practice – and seeing shows that don’t inspire you is like losing time in the studio. With any show at the Academy, it’s important that the work presented gets people back to their studios wanting to make art.”

During the February 3^rd opening of Beautiful Beast, it was clear from guests’ reactions that this show had succeeded in inspiring artists. I overheard more than one guest remark, “This is THE BEST show the Academy’s ever put on.”

Beautiful Beast brings together 16 of the most compelling and influential figurative sculptors of our era. With wildly different visions, materials, and processes, the artists in this show slip back and forth between the beautiful and the grotesque. The works, which range in material from carved wood to stainless steel, foam rubber to video installation, ask audiences to question the meaning of these two paradigms and all that lies between.

During the Opening

Last week, I sat down with Peter Drake to discuss three of the pieces that caught my eye and left ME itching to get back to the studio.

Lesley Dill - "Rush" metal, foil, organza and wire (size?)

Although Beautiful Beast is a sculpture show, Lesley Dill’s 2D wall installation, “Rush” was the first piece Drake thought of for the show. “Often sculpture shows can feel monotonous, because there tend to be a lot of works of roughly the same height,” he says.  “This piece, which covers the whole wall, activates the space so that anything happening in the rest of the room becomes part of a spectacle.”

In “Rush” a small metal cutout of a seated figure occupies the left corner of the wall. Hundreds of different cutouts pour forth from his back, overlapping and flowing into one another in a cloud of swirling imagery. Dill grew up in Maine, and says the vastness and grey luminosity of the sea has stayed with her and influenced her work in metal.

Dill sees the small figure as one of us. The work deals with the limitlessness and wonder of the creative impulse, and the need to just get ideas out of one’s system. She based the piece around a Kafka quote:

“The tremendous world I have in my head. But how free to myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I’m here, that is quite clear to me…”

“This figure needs to have this purging experience in order to live and survive,” says Drake. “There’s a rush of cultural activity exploding out of him –Indonesian art, European art, American art, Mexican art – all these different icons of creativity.”

The overall effect of this piece is one of overwhelming beauty combined with frustration and confusion at this cloud of ideas. Just as the viewer can’t parse the imagery out into discrete units, as artists, we often don’t know quite what it is we’re trying to make or say, just that we need to get it out.

Folkert de Jong - "The Piper" 2007, polystyrene, plastic, pigments and adhesive, 80x40x40

In the far corner of Wilkinson Hall stands Folkert de Jong’s “The Piper.”  Its placement in the corner is no accident – with playful, candy colours and an enticing variety of materials, The Piper is incredibly seductive from afar. “It acts as a magnet and pulls people into the space,” Drake says.  

De Jong creates an entire world out of cheap materials such as polyurethane and Styrofoam. “Many of his pieces are anti-war themed,” Drake explains. “He does something that few people can do – he makes very powerful social statements, but you don’t feel like you’re being preached to.”  

The pipers de Jong refers to are the musicians employed to encourage soldiers into battle. “The piper is both musical and beautiful, but for a very destructive purpose,” says Drake. “The head of this sculpture is based on Abraham Lincoln – a strange contradiction, considering that Lincoln was a crusader for peace.”

While this piece immediately draws you in, up close, it’s downright frightening. The range of textures is at once gorgeous and repulsive, with wax that depicts flesh peeling away in some areas. The body is the size of a human form, but the swollen looking head is larger than life, and leans forward toward the viewer. If you stand right in front of the sculpture, you feel as though it might to topple over onto you, invoking a harrowing physical experience.

Monica Cook - "Snowsuit" wax, pigment, fur coats, aqua resin, fiberglass -28x30x40

Monica Cook crafted “Snowsuit” specifically for Beautiful Beast.  It began as a smaller figure, but grew to life size as she worked. “She had in mind the idea of shedding the skin, the rebirth and renewal that you must do in order to grow as a person,” says Drake. “But she was adamant about not leaving the skin behind looking like some discarded thing – she wanted to construct it in a confident posture.”

At first this piece, with its furs and zippers, reminded me of a piece of clothing I might see in a winter couture show. However, after spending some time with it I began to feel a bit sick. Cook incorporated flesh coloured pigment into the resin, which reminds the viewer of human skin. The scale of the piece makes it impossible not to think of our own bodies while viewing the piece, and the large chunks of the legs, arms and torso are cut away to reveal what looks like a layer of viscera and organs. I couldn’t help but think of “Silence of the Lambs” suit made of skin.

Monica Cook was originally thought of as a painter, but has undergone massive transformations as an artist. “She started making sculptures for stop action animation, so she had to learn all these new techniques at the same time,” says Drake. “This piece is about her journey as a creative person – she’s constantly learning and trying on new things, becoming expert at them and moving on.”

While the opening certainly succeeded in inspiring Academy students and viewers alike to get back to the studio and make things, it also provided a fantastic opportunity for the artists in the show to meet each other. “Many of them have had work in shows together or followed one another’s work over the years, but have never met in person,” says Drake. “So there was a really nice energy in bringing them together.”

Beautiful Beast is on view daily in Wilkinson Hall until March 8^th, 2015.

The Final Chapter: China Residency, Part 8

By Zoe Sua-Kay (MFA 2014)

After a week in the Chinese capital and having soaked up some of the local culture and scene close to our hotel, we decided it was time to put our tourist hats on and see some of global tourism’s most famous sites – The Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and of course, the Great Wall of China.

The Forbidden City

Probably somewhat unwisely, we chose one of the hottest days we’d yet experienced to explore the Palace. Without trees and with it’s relentless expanses of  brick courtyards we were rarely offered any relief from the glaring sun as we trekked the 3,153 feet from the entrance (Meridian Gate) to the Imperial Gardens at the very end… and back again.
 

Forbidden City, view from the Meridian Gate.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony

Girl with Chinese head wear

Elliot Purse strikes a pose in the Forbidden City

The Summer Palace

The Summer Palace was a nice contrast to the flat, scorching and exposed layout of the Forbidden City. Located forty minutes from central Beijing by subway, the Palace is arranged over leafy hills and at the bank of the large Kunming Lake.

Lady in an old-fashioned Chinese outfit inside the Summer Palace

View from interior

The following day, and having delayed what we had deemed to be the climax of our cultural education in China, the time had finally come to undertake the epic experience of taking a hike along the Great Wall of China.

Elizabeth Shupe, Elliot Purse and James Adelman on the Great Wall

And what a hike it was!

We had the good fortune of visiting a part of the wall that had only just recently been opened to the public. Thus, we hardly encountered any tourists outside of the group we had gone with. We were able to explore the ancient, unreconstructed sections and happily take photographs without the reputed hoards of tourists at other, more well-known sections of the wall. 

However, this also meant that we had to be on guard of the loose, uneven terrain of the ancient wall. Without any kind of railing (or safety precautions of any kind at all), the possibility of miss-stepping and falling off the steep, isolated wall was imminent. But we made it.

Elliot conquers the wall

Beth conquers the wall

 

I conquer the wall

James conquers the wall

Last weekend in China

 

Our final weekend in China was spent with Ian, our guide on the Beijing side. He took us around CAFA’s/China Academy of Fine Art’s museum of ‘Excellent Student Work’. And excellent it was - we all left a little mind boggled (a.k.a downright intimidated) at the quality of work these Chinese undergraduates had produced.

This was followed by lunch down the road from Ai Weiwei’sStudio.

Ai Wei Wei’s studio, exterior view

And finally, a trip to Beijing’s famous 798 Art District, for an opening at Pace Beijing.

A word of sincere thanks.

On behalf of James, Elliot, Beth and myself, I would like to thank everyone who has made this trip possible. It has, with all honesty, been a life changing experience.

While we have now all finally separated to our respective homes, I think my fellow residency compatriots will appreciate the quote I quite simply could not have signed off without:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. 
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. 
I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. 
All those... moments... will be lost in time, like] tears... in... rain.

- Roy Batty

On May 25, four Academy students arrived in China to start a two-month residency in Shanghai and Beijing. James Adelman, Elliot Purse, Elizabeth Shupe and Zoe Sua-Kay (all members of the class of 2014) will share their experiences here throughout the summer.

The Colors of Beijing: China Residency, Part 7

By Elizabeth Shupe (MFA 2014)

Today it rained. We woke up to the sound of the water gently swishing down the gutter outside the window and drip-dripping off of the roof.  When I stepped outside of the hotel to make my way to breakfast, it seemed Beijing was still half asleep, curled into itself like a contented house cat  The rain continued to drizzle down from the sky.

In the early afternoon we took the subway to the National Art Museum, grateful to have an indoor activity to do on a day such as this. We walked through an exhibit of delicate ink paintings done in a traditional style. Each showed incredible skill- deft handling of line combined with subtle washes of grey tones rendered both the sweep of great vistas and the tiny intricacies of a human face with precision. Most of the paintings were immense, and they filled the gallery with their presence, requesting respect and silence. Their fine grey gradations and the blurry edges where the wet ink had soaked into the rice paper put me in mind of the world I had woken up in that morning- a moist, monochromatic world, where all sounds were hushed by the steady drip of the water from the sky.

Yes, Beijing could be that way, I supposed. But it had surprised me when I had woken up this morning to find the vibrant city dampened and quiet. I had only spent a few days here, and yet I felt that I had a good grasp on the character of the place- colorful and bustling, filled with shouts and laughter, cooking smells, and countless rickshaws. The city of Beijing was a wrinkled, knowing smile on the face of China, reflecting its deep history and good nature. But today, a more reserved and stately Beijing was revealed. It was a new color to add to the palette I had been composing in my head, a palette of all the colors of this ancient city.

It had started in the Forbidden City, my mental palette, when I had noticed the specific yellow of all of the roof tiles. It was a mustardy yellow, verging on gold, and it stretched across the Forbidden City, crowning almost every building. My guide book had said that the yellow color had belonged to the emperor, and no one else had been allowed to decorate their buildings with it. I had thought about what power that must be, to own a color. As an artist, I must say I was a tad bit jealous.

The next day, on my way to breakfast, I stumbled across a store selling lucky cats. They came in different colors- red, pink, blue, green, yellow, and black. Each color meant something different, and although I couldn’t discern what they meant, I knew they were all auspicious. The round smiling faces of the cat figurines in so many different hues cheered me, and it was then that I truly started paying attention to the colors of the city.

The maroon curtains of the bicycle rickshaws matched almost exactly the rich maroon of the buildings at the opulent Lama Temple. Gold and bronze Buddha statues peered out from shop windows, and gold decorated the eaves of the concubine’s quarters in the Forbidden City. White marble gleamed on bridges where the railings were carved to look like clouds. The same color was more austere in a statue of the philosopher and religious leader Confucious.  Bright green and blue paintings of dragons adorned wooden gates. The sky was a paler shade of blue, the trees lining the streets a more lively green.

Also green was the bodies of two crickets in cages that I heard before I saw, in a small courtyard off of a narrow hutong alley. There were orange carp in a bowl, glinting in the sunlight, and a paler orange cat who shared tea with me in a quiet teahouse. There was a black bird in front of a convenience store, its leg shackled to a leather cord that was tied to its perch. The acid pink of plastic lotus flowers in a garland contrasted with the soft blush of fresh peaches that were being sold in the very same store.  Truly, this was a city made of color.

But the color that spoke the loudest here was red.  A bright red like oxygenated blood. In the form of giant red silk tassels it hung in nearly every shop front window. Red lanterns hung in the trees over a shopping street, marching in straight lines above the shoppers. The same red was on cartons of Double Happiness cigarettes, and in the fresh peppers siting in a bowl in front of a Sichuan restaurant, even on the Chinese flag itself that snapped in the breeze above Tiananmen Square. Red was the color of luck, and good fortune.

I struggled to remember that fact as Zoe and I huddled under her umbrella on the short trek back from the subway station after the art museum. We were talking about how much was riding on our next year at the Academy, how simultaneously excited and terrified we were. The red lanterns in front of a restaurant had turned dark and saggy in the rain, I noticed. I felt a little like that myself.

But then I remembered a piece of graffiti I had seen on my way to breakfast that morning. It had been written in English, black spray-paint on a grey concrete wall, and was just as colorful as the morning had promised it be- in other words, completely devoid of chroma. But I remembered the message. “KEEP ON PAINTING” it had said, with an underline for emphasis. “Ok then, I will.” I thought to myself.

Keep on painting. Its all any of us can really do. But in a world as colorful as this one, those words promise adventure.

On May 25, four Academy students arrived in China to start a two-month residency in Shanghai and Beijing. James Adelman, Elliot Purse, Elizabeth Shupe and Zoe Sua-Kay (all members of the class of 2014) will share their experiences here throughout the summer.