The town of Stockbridge, in the Berkshire Mountains
of Western Massachusetts, has long been a magnet for artists, including Daniel
Chester French, the sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial. The tradition continues
today at Chesterwood, French’s summer
home and studio, now preserved as a museum. In particular, the museum, as it
has done for 39 years, has presented exhibitions of contemporary large-scale
artworks.
The exhibit that was up there when I visited two
weeks ago, and which will continue until Oct. 9, is “Out of Site: Contemporary
Sculpture at Chesterwood.” It contains works by 14 artists, asked by guest
curator Sharon Bates to develop new projects or to adapt existing works that
directly respond to the environmental, cultural, and aesthetic attributes of
the landscape at Chesterwood.
One in particular struck me, which is why I took
this photo: The Eighth Wonder, by
Brian Kane and Michael Oatman. Instead of “Wonder,” a more accurate term for
the subject matter of this inflatable sculpture would be “Monster.” I say that
in a descriptive, rather than pejorative, sense. This piece, created from 2014
to 2017 and designed for Toronto’s Union Station, was inspired by eyewitness
accounts of sea monsters, as well as images from 1950s sci-fi movies.
How, you might ask, does this sculpture “respond to…attributes
of the landscape at Chesterwood”? There’s not much in the way of water around
the property, but there is something of the same size as this figure. It’s a
small-scale version of an item that is itself an early approach to French’s
most famous work: Abraham Lincoln, in the great secular temple created for him
by a grateful republic in Washington, DC. Kane and Oatman figure that their monster would be the same as Mr. Lincoln, were he to stand up.
No comments:
Post a Comment