William Tucker's ambiguous and complex sculptures are currently on view at the McKee Gallery through June 3rd. Tucker discusses his recent work and thoughts on sculpture with Eric Gelber.
Front:
William Tucker Greek Horse 2003
bronze; 56 x 44 x 26 inches
Courtesy McKee Gallery
Tucker entrusts his hands and the modeling process to lead him to meaningful discoveries in form and his keen understanding of the history of sculpture is always present. Although Henry Moore and other modernist sculptors under his influence flirted with ambiguity they never strayed far from the full figure. Tucker's work is the apotheosis of ambiguous form, the emergence and dissolution of the bodily fragment. He builds his sculptural cores until the covered layers of plaster and topmost youngest layer of plaster subtly mesh. We are inspired to join the sculptor and to mull over surfaces and outlines that morph as you view them in the round. The seemingly endless modeling process experienced by the sculptor is re-experienced by the viewer because there is no finality or settling of vision, no static resolution, monolithic shape, or clear cut subject matter. The physical process of building and layering reveals a multitude of interesting forms, textures, and relationships.
This interview was conducted via e-mail.
In your book “The Language of Sculpture” you said that, “[T]he evocation of the human is the fundamental reason for making sculpture.” I would like to know if you still feel this way and if you have anything to add to that statement. What would a sculpture that does not evoke the human look like and can it be a good sculpture?
The quote you selected comes from the 1998 introduction to the book, which was originally published in 1974, being a collection of essays written in the preceding few years. Of course, my sculpture and my views on sculpture have changed a lot since that time, but when a new printing was to come out a few years ago, I didn't feel like tinkering with the text. I just expanded and rewrote the introduction. The context for the quote is a discussion of the expansion of the boundaries of “sculpture” in the past 40 years. I was trying to describe what the experience of the sculpture I make, and that of the work I respond to, both contemporary and historic, what that experience is like; a simultaneous response of the eyes, the body and the mind, the memory.
In “The Language of Sculpture” you wrote that Rodin's sculptures signified “the beginning of the release of structure from subject.” Do you think that a sculpture free from all associations is possible? After seeing your sculptures currently on view at the McKee Gallery I feel like the presence of the subject is submerged or subtle because you need to look at the sculptures at a specific angle in order to see it. From certain viewpoints the subject matter, hands in various poses, a fragment of a dancer's body, are completely obliterated and we are left with a completely abstract, pseudo-organic dynamic form with a heavily nuanced surface.
That quote comes from the early 70s. No, on the contrary, a sculpture free from association is impossible. That was a dream of constructivism. The question is one of articulating the associations that are inherent in the modeling process, in a material that changes its state as you use it. The subject of sculpture before Rodin, including Rodin, is just the first image, the way you recognize the piece. But the energy of the sculpture, if it's any good, consists in the layering of images that emerge as you spend time with it, moving around it, moving toward and away from it. Look at the back of a piece as apparently familiar as “The Thinker” for example, and you'll experience something quite different and tremendously powerful. Also the back and right shoulder of Michelangelo's “Day” in the Medici Chapel, which is in effect the front of the sculpture, because he didn't care to complete the face.
For 20 years I made abstract sculpture in constructed materials, steel, wood and so on. The forms were mostly open. They were addressed to the eyes of the viewer. I started to model directly in plaster in the early 1980s, trying to bring the hand back into the work, to lose the distancing effect of the eye, and the pre-formed, expected character of steel. As I worked, the sculptures became bulkier. They were no longer transparent, about space, about drawing. They no longer had an identifiable front and back. With a full volume you are no longer in control. You can't know what is going on on the far side of the sculpture, moreover the setting time of the material means that you have to separate the work of modeling from thinking, from making judgements.
Without consciously setting out to do so, I found over the 1990s that most of my bigger sculptures were becoming torsos. Then I made a series of heads --imaginary portraits -- which presented the image much more directly, I thought inescapably. Even so, many people didn't seem to recognize them. The work in this show is a lot more recognizable, but the motif is only there to get me and the viewer started, if it gets in the way of the experience I will have failed. The most literal image in the show is the “Greek Horse,” and that piece gave me a lot of problems. I could not have been that literal with a human motif.
Do you really think that the modeling process is cut off from the thinking process? Are the judgments you are making completely improvisational? Certainly your earlier constructive phase involved intuition. Are you saying that it is important that you don't know where you will end up when you start a sculpture?
I usually start with something that will fit inside my hand -- it might be a suggestive fragment of plaster picked up from the studio floor, it might be a quickly modeled shape in clay. I keep accumulating these. They can be around for years before I feel ready to start working from one. This might involve making drawings, or larger models, before committing to realizing the sculpture on a large scale. It can take a long time before making this commitment, just as building the work itself can take years. The whole process is a dialectic between the completely intuitive and spontaneous and the more considered and critical and structural, because there is always an element of engineering in making something that will hold together and stand up. The fact of its standing without external support is to me integral to sculpture.
So, you're right, you can never completely separate the intention and the invention. There's a wonderful passage in Jose Saramago's novel “The Cave” -- which is about a potter who becomes a sculptor -- about the brains in our fingers. It is they who get the vague instructions from the brain in the head and who completely transform it into something the brain in the head could never have imagined. About 25 years ago I started to realize that I had to let my hands do the work, directly, without tools, and as far as possible without the critical intervention of the eyes or the brain. The image of the hand, the sculptor's hand, is the theme of the three most recent pieces in the show at McKee, all made in the last year.
Critics have called your sculptures inchoate masses, formless lumps, or even worse. Can you talk about the difficulties of making contemplative sculptures in an age that demands immediate gratification?
There's no such thing as a formless lump. Anything you can see as a separate shape -- a rock, a cloud, a mountain, even a wave, has a form. When people use words like “formless” or “inchoate” about my sculpture what I think they're saying is that they can't immediately identify the shape and that makes them uncomfortable. They don't want to spend time looking and exploring the piece further. It seems to me that looking at sculpture, just as much as making it, is a complex and demanding process, but it has its own rewards. I think it's sad that so much of what passes for sculpture these days can be visually and conceptually understood immediately. It's a process that's been going on everywhere since the 1960s. I was one of a group of young artists in London then who demanded immediacy and clarity, the denial of the figure and the trace of the hand. But looking back now the work seems a lot more complex and suggestive than it appeared at the time.
Can you talk about why the history of sculpture should concern us today, why isolated sculptural objects should still matter to an audience habituated to quirky installations and multi-media agglomerations?
Most of the sculpture of the past, from every society, represents gods, demons, ancestors and other mythical beings in the form of the human figure. The spirit of those beings inhabited the sculpture and gave it a magical power. In a secular society without common beliefs work like mine has no public or memorial function, and it doesn't use the conventional language of representing the figure. But the reason for making what you call isolated sculptural objects is to evoke the human and to give it the magical presence that sculpture once had. Most of the images in our culture are quickly consumed, flat or transparent, and temporary. Sculpture that is solid and permanent will still be there when the power is turned off, even when there is no more power. In a way, the point of sculpture for me is the inexhaustible variety of its aspects and the way in which it continually changes in relation to the light, the weather and its surroundings, but still retains its own character.
William Tucker: Recent Sculpture through June 3, 2005 at McKee Gallery, 745 Fifth Ave at 57th Street, 212-688-5951.
