BERKELEY, CA 1963 – 1965
In 1963 we moved to Berkeley, and I started teaching art and art history classes at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco.
The first two years we had a small garage I used for a studio, where I made some pieces in clay and plasticine, some of which I cast in plaster. The few pieces I have left from this time (actually or in photos) were made in two distinct approaches.
CUBIST STYLE
My Cubist-influenced pieces refer mainly to the sculptures of Picasso and Matisse, to works I was very familiar with from my many hours over many years in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I modeled these pieces in clay and plasticine. They represent two classical themes: the portrait bust and the reclining female figure. They are still within the tradition of rendering a natural object, though with a transformation of naturalistic body parts to abstract shapes suggesting those parts.
In 1963 we moved to Berkeley, and I started teaching art and art history classes at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco.
The first two years we had a small garage I used for a studio, where I made some pieces in clay and plasticine, some of which I cast in plaster. The few pieces I have left from this time (actually or in photos) were made in two distinct approaches.
CUBIST STYLE
My Cubist-influenced pieces refer mainly to the sculptures of Picasso and Matisse, to works I was very familiar with from my many hours over many years in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
I modeled these pieces in clay and plasticine. They represent two classical themes: the portrait bust and the reclining female figure. They are still within the tradition of rendering a natural object, though with a transformation of naturalistic body parts to abstract shapes suggesting those parts.
GUY Summer, 1963
Cast plaster 12" high
Cast plaster 12" high
This cubist style head, GUY, is the portrait of Guy Mérouze, the father of a friend of Ruth. We stayed with him in Paris in the summer of 1962. I made the sculpture after sketches I made of him there, influenced by Picasso’s 1909 Head of a Woman, a portrait of his lover Fernande.
Photo and drawings of Guy Mérouze, and Picasso's Head of a Woman of1909, in the original plaster cast.
Reclining Woman I 1963 (3 views)
Cast plaster 3" high x 10" long
Cast plaster 3" high x 10" long
Reclining Woman II 1963 (4 views)
Cast plaster 4 ¾” high x 7” long
Cast plaster 4 ¾” high x 7” long
It is easy to see in these two figures of reclining women, modeled in clay and cast in plaster, the reclining nudes they refer to, which indeed were sketches I had drawn from live models. These pieces readily conjure up the poses of the models, while emphasizing shapes and structures specific only to the sculptures.
Bull (2 views) Plasticine c. 2 ¾" x 5"
The two sides of this bull have distinctly different and quite abstract treatments while the silhouette keeps the figure coherent.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
I also made small figurative pieces in clay based on a different approach to abstraction. These were built, constructed with shaped bits of plasticine to suggest figures, rather than modeled in the traditional sense where art attempts to imitate forms in nature.
As Paul Klee famously wrote: "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."
Though most of these sketches are lost, a few remain in photographs.
I also made small figurative pieces in clay based on a different approach to abstraction. These were built, constructed with shaped bits of plasticine to suggest figures, rather than modeled in the traditional sense where art attempts to imitate forms in nature.
As Paul Klee famously wrote: "Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible."
Though most of these sketches are lost, a few remain in photographs.
Five plasticine sketches
These very small figurative sketches in plasticine use the simplest shapes, and the shapes are assembled more than modeled. All of these pieces are frontal and symmetrical like artifacts of prehistoric art.
Two heads in plasticine
These two small heads are as basic as Paul Klee’s drawings. Klee is one of my favorite artists. Each head has a large shape placed upon a smaller one, a kind of reverse snowman, and only the small marks suggesting eyes (and a mouth on the smaller one) indicate that these are heads on a small “body”.
Small Fetish Figure 2 ¾” high Cement Venus of Willendorf 4 ½ “ high
When I made this little lump of a figure in clay it reminded me of some prehistoric effigy, like the limestone Venus of Willendorf (c. 28,000 – 25,000 B.C.E.). I cast it in cement and it has the look and feel of some stone-age fetish.
The inherent scale of small pieces such as these figures and heads often has the feel of much larger works.
The sculptor Henry Moore said this about scale:
“There is a side to scale not to do with its actual physical size, its measurement in feet and inches — but connected with vision. A carving might be several times over life size and yet be petty and small in feeling — and a small carving only a few inches in height can give the feeling of huge size and monumental grandeur, because the vision behind it is big.“
The inherent scale of small pieces such as these figures and heads often has the feel of much larger works.
The sculptor Henry Moore said this about scale:
“There is a side to scale not to do with its actual physical size, its measurement in feet and inches — but connected with vision. A carving might be several times over life size and yet be petty and small in feeling — and a small carving only a few inches in height can give the feeling of huge size and monumental grandeur, because the vision behind it is big.“
Plasticine figure (2 views) c.3 ½ “ high. Cast plaster figure (2 views) 8 ¾” high.
These pieces were built of stacked and interlocking chunks of clay of different shapes and sizes, more constructed than modeled.
They were not conceived as figurative, though the one on the right, on two “feet” and cast in plaster painted silver, could be thought of as a stocky and somewhat belligerent “warrior”. Again there seems to be something of Paul Klee in these pieces.
They were not conceived as figurative, though the one on the right, on two “feet” and cast in plaster painted silver, could be thought of as a stocky and somewhat belligerent “warrior”. Again there seems to be something of Paul Klee in these pieces.
Three plasticine constructions of stacked forms.
These pieces are made of clusters of forms stacked against each other like stones, rather than interlocking to form a single object. They offer more a suggestion of landscape than of figures.
Two clay pieces 1964 7" and 12 ½ “ high.
I also made a series of clay pieces that seemed to be hybrids of animal and vegetable, of figure and plant. Again I used an additive approach, though the parts are shaped or modeled. These sculptures have a sense of growing up and out, like plant life.