Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly's primary artistic focus
is on the highly refined articulation of shapes and colors. In the painting
Red Green Blue (1964) he presents three discrete, unmodulated fields of
vivid, highly saturated color. While he is perhaps best known for such
paintings, he has also produced a great many sculptures. Works such as
his large-scale, two-part bronze Garden sculpture, Double Curve (1988),
might be described as freestanding equivalents of the simple shapes seen
in his paintings. At first, Double Curve looks two-dimensional. Yet our
sense of its volume, and of the tension between its pair of arched, 18-foot-tall
sections, changes depending on where we stand.
Ellsworth Kelly
Double Curve 1988
bronze
Richard Serra
Since the mid-1970s Richard Serra has been exploring the sculptural
fundamentals of mass and gravity to create sculpture that produces a simultaneous
sense of balance and precariousness. Prop (1968), for example, consists
of a 60-inch-square sheet of lead that is held flat against the gallery
wall and about three feet off the floor by a rolled lead cylinder that
leans against it. The apparent instability of this arrangement leads the
viewer to focus on the weight of the lead sheet and on the simultaneous
assertion and defiance of the force of gravity. Serra's Garden work, Five
Plates, Two Poles (1971), produces a similar kind of tension. While this
sculpture is indeed stable, the five large steel plates propped up against
each other appear to be in danger of toppling. Richard Serrav Five Plates,
Two Poles 1971v Cor-Ten steel
Scott Burton
For much of his career, Scott Burton created works related to the human
figure. Chairs and benches interested him because of the ways they interplay
with, and symbolize, the body. Initially, as in his video Individual Behavior
Tableaux (1980), he used chairs as props. Later, he made chairs as sculptures,
including Two-Part Chairs, Obtuse Angle (A Pair) (1983-1984) and Seat-Leg
Table (1986). Whether arranged in a gallery or installed outdoors, each
of these works has a distinctive sculptural presence while also functioning
as inviting and practical pieces of furniture. Scott Burton
Seat-Leg Table 1986/refabricated 1991
sandstone
Mark di Suvero
Mark di Suvero's sculpture deals with questions of scale, material,
and viewer interaction. Stuyvesantseye (1965) was made early in his career,
when he constructed works from found materials. The sculpture features
a discarded barrel, chair, and wood and metal objects, which he picked
up on New York City streets. Shortly after finishing Stuyvesantseye, di
Suvero began working on a much larger scale, using cranes to manipulate
massive industrial materials. He was soon producing monumental outdoor
structures-works for which he has become best known. The Garden sculptures
Arikidea (1977-1982) and Molecule (1977-1983), like many of di Suvero's
indoor pieces, invite viewers to look at them from every angle. The three-ton
Arikidea, with its suspended wooden swing, actively encourages viewer engagement.
Mark di Suvero
Arkidea 1977-1982
Cor-Ten steel, steel, cedar
Mark di Suvero
Molecule 1977-1983
steel, paint
Kinji Akagawa
The art of Kinji Akagawa points up the difference between public and
private space. In his bench Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking (1987), he
creates a public place for activities that are normally private-a place
where visitors can rest emotionally and psychologically as well as physically.
In Table for Dialogue (1993-1994), made for this exhibition, he brings
materials associated with the outdoors-wood, and stone-to an indoor space.
And in Lap Boxes for Poets (1980-1981), he takes a kind of object designed
as a container for inner thoughts and draws our attention to the ways in
which it opens.
Akagawa, who lives in Minnesota, cites two major influences: the artistic
traditions of his native Japan, where refined, highly crafted objects are
made to function in people's everyday lives; and the French philosopher
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose work explores the distinctions between pure
perception and thoughts that are defined by language.
Kinji Akagawa
Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking 1987
granite, basalt, cedar
Deborah Butterfield
In Deborah Butterfield's hands, debris from landfills and demolition
sites, such as rusty wires, crushed heating ducts, broken twigs, and bark
are infused with an extraordinary lifelike quality. With horses as her
only subject, she uses gestures such as the tilt of a head or the angle
of a leg to convey and define a specific energy at a precise moment. During
the 1970s Butterfield created numerous horses out of sticks and mud, bringing
the animals' environment into art galleries. In Woodrow (1988) (a piece
done for the Garden and named after her father-in-law), the "sticks" are
made of bronze, making it possible for this horse to survive outdoors.
When producing this work, Butterfield discovered that the strength of the
bronze enabled her to make the piece without an armature-a discovery that
opened up new formal possibilities.
Deborah Butterfield
Woodrow 1988
bronze
David Nash
British artist David Nash works to draw distinctions between the inside
space of a museum and the outside space of the rural land on which he likes
to work. Nash is an ardent environmentalist, and his art demonstrates a
sensitivity to the materials he favors, such as wood, slate, and stone.
But it is not a simple evocation or re-creation of nature that interests
him. "While natural branch and twig shapes are beautiful in themselves,"
he says, "it is transformation that creates meaning." Both Standing Frame
(1987) in the Garden and Nature to Nature III (1987) (installed here) create
geometric forms from organic materials, producing a union of the ideal
and the natural. That union is temporary, however, since nature will continue
to work changes on his sculptures.
David Nash
Standing Frame 1987
oak
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg's art leads us to pay attention to the little things
that we often overlook. By taking ordinary objects such as a three-way
plug or a spoon and putting them through changes of scale and materials,
he discovers formal connections between dissimilar items. For example,
he likens his and his wife Coosje van Bruggen's Garden sculpture, Spoonbridge
and Cherry (1985-1988), to both an ocean liner and an earring. In his vividly
imaginative notes and drawings, objects become elastic-stretching, growing,
and curving as if alive. Oldenburg and van Bruggen have been artistic partners
since the early 1980s, creating numerous monumental public sculptures.
While he began working with the form of the spoon as early as 1967, it
was she who added the cherry. Whether indoors or out, their work surprises,
amuses, and excites a viewer's imagination.
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
Spoonbridge and Cherry 1985-1988
aluminum, stainless steel, paint
Judith Shea
Judith Shea's early training was as a clothing designer. Her earliest
works, such as Bop (1980), were simple forms made of pliant fabric and
hung on the wall. Later, she began casting fabric in metal so as to achieve
greater strength and rigidity. The simplified forms in works such as Enduring
Charms (1986) synthesize figurative art and Minimalism. The use of clothing
forms allowed her to represent the human figure using the most economical
of means. In the mid-1980s, Shea began juxtaposing figures with forms and
then pairing figures to give her work added psychological complexity. The
inclusion of the pyramid in Enduring Charms underscores the formal links
between the hollow skirt form and early Egyptian figures of pharaohs and
queens. She continues the Egyptian motif in her Garden sculpture, Without
Words (1988), which features a sculpted head fragment modeled after an
Eighteenth Dynasty sculpture of Queen Tiye. Beside the head is a rumpled
modern overcoat and a dress form (patterned after a dinner dress that belonged
to her mother), which, like the skirt in Enduring Charms, seems both ancient
and contemporary. The three juxtaposed pieces in Without Words create an
ambiguous narrative that touches on art, history, and personal psychology.
Judith Shea
Without Words 1988
bronze, cast marble, limestone
Philip Larson
Trained as an art historian, Philip Larson turned to art-making when
he was 29. A passionate devotee of Prairie School architecture, his work
frequently displays a geometrical patterning reminiscent of the architectural
ornamentation that adorns buildings of Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright,
and their followers. Larson's respect for the architectural history of
the Midwest is evident in his etched-glass decorations for bus shelters
along Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.
In the cast-iron elements for his floor-bound Three Anasazi (1989) and
his Garden bench, The Six Crystals (1988), Larson explores progressive
permutations of combinations of basic geometric forms. The cast-iron components
in The Six Crystals represent the six possible combinations of four irregular
diamond shapes derived from the shapes of rock crystals. The trio of cast-iron
parts that make up Three Anasazi are variations on a basic triangle-and-diamond
motif. Through its title and its evocation of eroded masonry, the piece
pays homage to the Anasazi, a pueblo-building culture in the Southwest
that flourished from the 11th through the 14th centuries.
Philip Larson
The Six Crystals 1988
granite, cast iron
Tony Cragg
The astonishing diversity of British sculptor Tony Cragg's work suggests
an urge to explore the entire history of form and form-making. His materials
include the natural (wood, stone, clay) and the man-made (plastic, metal,
glass, plaster, found objects). He has formed works by casting, carving,
and constructing, as well as by simply arranging.
His interest in the interaction of nature and culture and the evolution
and disintegration of form is evident in both the plaster Generations and
the granite-and-steel Ordovician Pore (both 1989). Both sculptures contrast
primitive organic forms with highly developed man-made ones. In Generations,
crude, sluglike forms, suggestive of primitive animal life and made simply
by rolling up sheets of wet plaster, are contrasted to a pair of ovoid
disks suggestive of highly polished lenses-the very tools scientists use
to observe natural forms through telescopes and microscopes.
While Generations may present the human and natural as opposites, Ordovician
Pore hints at man's status as part of nature. The biomorphic forms in this
sculpture allude to the fossilized remains of a type of algae that developed
in the Ordovician period, which began about 500 million years ago. This
algae is believed to have produced oxygen, which allowed for the development
of other life forms; but ironically, the oxygen poisoned the algae and
killed it. By juxtaposing these forms with a pair of cylindrical shapes
reminiscent of nuclear cooling towers, Cragg seems both to suggest both
man's self-destruction and the likelihood that new life will develop as
a result.
Tony Cragg
Ordovician Pore 1989
granite, steel
Siah Armajani
One of Siah Armajani's abiding artistic concerns has been the creation
of a truly public art that unites structure with site and use. His designs
for bridges, reading rooms, houses, and gazebos encourage both contemplation
and communal activity. One of this best-known local works, the elegant
Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge (1988), links the Garden with Loring Park. This
375-foot-long span incorporates the three fundamental approaches to bridge
building-beam, arch, and suspension. In other works, many of them smaller-scale,
indoor pieces, Armajani explores architectural elements and construction
techniques while divorcing them from their original functions. Bridge over
a Tree (1970), which was temporarily erected in the field that is now the
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, featured two staircases that led nowhere
except up and over a tree. The quirky Model for House #2 (1970), which
takes its form from lean-to dwellings, features a ramp that leads into
a wall and an inaccessible second-story room.
Siah Armajani
Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge 1988
steel, wood, paint, bronze
Alexander Calder
Known worldwide for his delicately balanced wire-and-tin mobiles, Alexander
Calder has been called "the man who made sculpture move." He ascribed his
interest in motion to his training as a mechanical engineer and to his
love for the circus and mechanical toys. Calling his mobiles "four-dimensional
drawings" and "moving Mondrians," he attempted to bring movement to geometric
abstraction. While his hanging mobiles were meant to be activated by the
gentle air movements of an indoor environment, he also created more robust
outdoor works that he called "stabiles": non-kinetic, abstract steel forms
such as the Garden's Black Flag (1974). In many sculptures Calder combined
the stabile and the mobile forms. The 1,500-pound The Spinner (1966)-the
1965 model for which is on view here-consists of a conical steel base topped
by a brightly colored mobile; the mobile is spun in the wind by a large
steel "pinwheel." In contrast, the tabletop Mobile (circa 1948), a three-legged
stabile supporting a delicate mobile, moves subtly in response to indoor
air currents.
Alexander Calder
Black Flag 1974
steel, paint
Temporary loan, courtesy The Pace Gallery, New York
Frank Gehry
Architect Frank Gehry has gained international renown as an innovative
designer of private and public buildings (Locally, his most recent effort
is the spectacular new Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University
of Minnesota). Yet it was his furniture designs that first brought him
national attention. In the early 1970s, he used laminated sheets of corrugated
cardboard to create a line of chairs, stools, tables, shelves, and other
household pieces, transforming a disposable material into furniture suitable
for most American homes. Sturdy and practical, yet whimsical, Gehry's Easy
Edges line, produced during the early 1970s, was immediately successful.
His recent Cross Check chairs are made of sturdy bentwood maple and inspired
by the forms of bushel baskets.
In the early 1980s, Gehry turned to nature for inspiration. He was particularly
interested in fish, "fascinated," he later said, "with the perfection and
variety of their forms." He has designed lamps, sculptures, architectural
columns, and even entire buildings in the shape of fish. The 22-foot-tall
Standing Glass Fish (1986), in the Garden's Cowles Conservatory, is made
of hundreds of glass scales bolted to a wooden framework.
Frank Gehry
Standing Glass Fish 1986
wood, glass, steel, silicone
Henry Moore
British sculptor Henry Moore stated that his aim as a sculptor was
to "understand and realize more completely what form and shape are about,
and to react to form in life, in the human figure, and in past sculpture."
He was especially interested in the theme of mother and child-a traditional
image that allowed him to address birth, nurturing, and creativity. He
tackled this theme hundreds of times, in both drawings and sculptures.
Often, he rendered women in forms taken from nature, suggesting a link
between woman and earth as fertile sources of life.
In a small tabletop bronze of 1956 depicting a seated mother and child,
the fluid drapery of the woman's dress suggests a waterfall or a seashell.
She holds her child at a distance, reticent rather than encompassing. In
contrast, the female figure in the Garden's Reclining Mother and Child,
completed in 1961, seems to be a part of the earth; the woman's rounded,
hollowed forms resemble hills or rocks. She gently cradles her child, who
seems to have emerged from her large cavelike or womblike aperture. Standing
Figure: Knife Edge (1961), also in the Garden, further demonstrates Moore's
interest in natural forms. He was intrigued by the shapes of bones and
fossils; this sculpture is based on the breastbone of a chicken. Its flattened,
arching "wings" also suggest flight and link the figure-probably female-to
images of ancient Greek winged goddesses.
Henry Moore
Reclining Mother and Child 1960-1961
bronze Henry Moore
Standing Figure: Knife Edge 1961
bronze
Isamu Noguchi
Using a cohesive formal vocabulary of organic shapes derived from nature,
Isamu Noguchi produced traditional sculpture, set and costume designs,
public playgrounds, parks, monuments, and functional objects such as lamps
and tables. He often drew on the aesthetic traditions of Japan, where he
spent much of his childhood. His work is also marked by a deep sensitivity
to materials, a consistent interest in the human figure, and a desire to
merge the functional with the sculptural.
These three concerns converge in the works on view here. The balsa-wood
elements of Cronos (1947) suggest human limbs, genitals, and bones; the
whole has the look of a standing figure. Similar shapes appear in his 1950
set design for the Martha Graham Dance Company's production Judith, whose
principal set piece was a tentlike framework of balsa wood that resembled
a snarling beast formed of phallic, spearlike poles.
Interested in weight and the appearance of weightlessness, Noguchi often
cast his wooden sculptures in bronze. Among those transformed by this change
in materials was Judith; a 1978 bronze cast of the balsa original is installed
in the Garden. His Akari lamps, inspired by traditional Japanese paper
lanterns, were intended to embody pure light and weightlessness; many of
them look like spindly, floating figures filled with light.
Isamu Noguchi
Theater set piece from Judith 1978, bronze; cast from 1950 wood version
Isamu Noguchi
Shodo Shima 1978
granite
Martin Puryear
Martin Puryear returns repeatedly to forms and motifs he has used before-modifying
them through changes in scale, proportion, or materials-in a continuous
effort to extract new meanings. Though he has worked with stone, cast metal,
and glass, his long-standing favorite material is wood. His love of wood
stems from his exposure to African carving and carpentry traditions while
a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone in the mid-1960s. He often combines
different woods in a single sculpture, as in number 12 from the series
Boy's Toys (1985), enjoying the interplay of textures and colors and the
responsiveness of the woods to various carving and shaping techniques.
Puryear's works on view inside the museum and in the Garden share similar
elongated, usually cone-shaped forms tapering off from a broad base. However,
their various approaches to scale, materials, and relationship to the viewer
produce a range of responses. The two columns in Ampersand (1987-1988),
flanking the main entrance to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, are a simplified
version of the square-to-circular transition found in the Boy's Toy piece;
but their massive scale and the brute quality of the granite make this
work stand in sharp contrast to the delicately sensual smaller sculpture.