Picasso:
The Classical Period and Al Taylor Wire Instruments 1989-1990
Picasso: The Classical
Period, at
C & M Arts
45 E 78th Street between Madison and Park Avenues,
New York NY 10021
212-861-0020
through December
5, 2003
Al Taylor: Wire
Instruments, 1989-90
Lawrence Markey
42 East 76th Street New York NY 10021-2711
Tel 212 517 9892 Fax 212 517 9894
November 13 to December 20, 2003
By JOE
FYFE
The classical world is continually
being addressed anew in art and literature. Recently, in Anne Carson's
new translation of Sappho's verse "If Not, Winter" Carson
combines the verbal and visual by utilizing the whiteness of the page,
magnifying the absence surrounding Sappho's work. The poems, extant
as scraps of text, appear on the page as bare fragments, surrounded
by blankness. This is how this ancient world appears to us, in bleached,
isolated shards that seem to hold traces of an ideal world of beauty
and wisdom that we somehow hope can inform the present.
Pablo Picasso Jeune Fille assise 1921
pencil on paper, 10-3/8 x 8-1/16 inches
Private Collection
C&M Arts has assembled
examples of Picasso's work which addresses this world of long ago, realized
after a sojourn in Rome and Pompeii. Here on display are some of his
most serene works. Baigneuse a la Serviette de Bain, for example, depicts
a standing female nude; her waving hair and towel picking up a wind
as she walks away from the sea. The entire image, assembled with delicate
flutters of gray brushstrokes, seems to float on the large sheet of
handmade paper. There are also a number of Greek and Roman sculptures
borrowed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, complementing Picasso's
paintings and drawings of classical heads, drapery and bodies rendered
to express a sculptural solidity.
Al Taylor Wire
Instrument (Danberry) 1989
plywood, paint and wire, 49-1/4 x 6 x 3-1/4 inches
Courtesy Lawrence Markey, New York
A few streets away at Lawrence
Markey gallery is an exhibition of sculpture and drawings by the late
Al Taylor, his "Wire Instruments" as he called them, also
seem to address the classical age. Here we are dealing with works that
are quite literally lyrical; they resemble partially abstracted lyres
that the ancient poets used accompany them as they sung their verses.
Taylor's sculptures are made from wood found on the street and are delicately
assembled with wire. They resemble Picasso's sculpture "Cubist
Guitar" but in their elongation and the whitewashed atmosphere
of the painted wood, they are also reminiscent of Greek or Roman temple
architecture. One can imagine a few lines from Sappho accompanied by
plucks from one of Taylor's shakily heroic instruments.
