Good afternoon everybody I'm Jock
Reynolds. I think I know all of you out
there by now who I can see I can't see
those of you in the back there with a
back lights on. I'm here with my
good friend Bob Taplin who lives in New
Haven is also a wonderful sculptor and
many of you probably don't know that I
actually got my MFA in sculpture and
you're here to be here here a little bit
of discussion Emmanuel Neri but about
sculptured in general tonight and I was
his TA I'll tell you more about that but
I thought what we would do is just let
each other
introduce ourselves say a little bit of
you know how we got our training as
artists and where and since we're a
teaching Museum we might say a few
comments about our teachers who really
made a difference for us and that's part
of why I did this very last show of
Neri's work was in tribute to him and and
in response to an offering of a
wonderful gift of his works to the
collection which you can see upstairs
and the gallery is open till 8 o'clock
tonight so Bob and I will each show some
slides talk a little bit about this
issue of you know sculpture where it is
now things he's interested in things I'm
interested in and we're gonna do it in
response to Manuel's show so Bob why
don't you lead off.
All right just quickly yeah teachers and
whatnot I'm I'm truly you know I had
great high school art teachers but I
didn't go to art school and I was a
Medieval Studies major in Pomona College
there were some great artists out there
at the time Jim Terrell, Mori Baden but
I've kind of you know cut my own track I
was just joking around with Jock I
finally got to go to art school when I
got to teach over at Yale with Jessica
Stockholder here for a couple of years
so I kind of enjoyed that so yeah been
pretty much outside the sort of realm of
the academic art world by and large
early on I was besotted with Marc de
Suvero was one of Neri's big buddies
out there and so I I worked from a sort
of abstract world you know toward the
figurative
and never related very well to the
minimalist thing which was the dominant
current when we were coming up and so
Neri also is interesting that way too as
somebody who who came out of abstract
expressionism but did not go for
minimalism what a different track yeah
so what I did was I made up a quick
little set of slides and just take me
5-10 minutes to run through these and
what I wanted to talk about was the
issue of the relationship between
process expression and well the
relationship between process and
expressions so you know you have a
situation where as with Neri you have
this tradition of expressionist
sculpture and Neri obviously came out
of the abstract expressionist world
where there's this idea that the marks
of the process of making this thing the
manipulation of the material and the
marks that are left on the object are
somehow a direct channel into the
artists psychology his state of mind his
you know what he's thinking who he is at
the time and it's a you know it's a it's
a tradition that comes right up through
you know van Gogh, Giacometti, Rodin
right up till the present Bill Tucker I
guess Jock says you've got a piece of
his ability to her is working right this
minute in this tradition these are two
on the left couple of massive plaster
pieces we're going to talk a little bit
about technique you know tucker works
with struck delight which is a is a
light thick slow slow drying plaster
that used to be used for the
underlayment of a plaster wall so these
things are done very much the way Neri
works directly on a big wooden burlap
armature just glom and that stuff on the
one on the right cast in bronze so we
may talk a little bit about that how
that changes everything especially in
the expressionist world where your your
relationship with sculpture has all this
to do with this sense of tracking the
actual
touching the process and the marks and
the thing and suddenly in a bronze of
course you're looking at a print of that
like a footprint in the sand of what
Rosalind Krauss called it indexical
image all right so Neri working in
plaster there were other people doing it
too. This is Mary Frank do you have a Mary
Frank here? We do, we do. Ok this was
probably done in the same era
you know same thing direct plaster
wooden armature
what interests me is that the
expressionist world is like tied into
the Romantic tradition right it's the
idea as I said that there's this sort of
direct print of the artists psyche
there's all this involvement with the
unfinished the non finito you know the
fact that it's all about the process the
thing that's that's happening the not
not the final product Mary Frank was an
even more romantic artist than the naree
not only in process but now in content
you know much more directly kind of
mythic feeling incredible she's still
with us and she's amazing alright so the
obvious precedence being Giacometti and
Rodin people who Denari
obviously adored and in Giacometti you
know I was just upstairs looking at
those things in Giacometti, it's the
sense that the process the expressive
trace of the process almost goes on to
the point where there's nothing left
he's hacking and removing and chopping
at the thing until there's just a just a
sliver left and you know Giocametti
incessantly talked about how you know he
could never arrive and what he wanted to
do he was always this was always just an
you know an approximation it was never
really any good again so that's that
romantic thing of the process counts the
goal the finished product is of not that
much interest. Rodin of course famously
leaving the the marks of the casting
process the the piece mold divisions on
the
surface again this is getting a little
more complicated now because this is
this is the casting process not Rodins hand .
Rodin's handling of the clay of
course was super expressive and and
again seem to be very psychological but
this you start to get this sense of oh
these divisions are these sort of
contour scars running across the surface
and of course nari picked up on that and
started to think about how to set a
contour line on the sculpture by digging
or painting or whatever so fascinating
alright so it seems to me it's
interesting thinking about what what is
all this not about neoclassicism right
okay on this land we know this guy
mister Canova down in down in in new
york on the right Hildebrand all right
so the Neo classics is the opposite of
this in every way it's all about the
goal the finish the contour the the
complete unity the the you know the the
thing as a finished complete unity and
and of course Hildebrand German
contemporary of Rodin becomes eventually
maybe unfairly associate associated with
the Nazis right so this is where this
goes this sense of unity and and
idealism coming down through the
Enlightenment and everything and
eventually ends up in the hands of the
Nazis so in the in the post-war period
there that Nerys coming out of this is
just totally utterly discredited you
know you wouldn't know contemporary
artists in 1952 would touch that with a
ten-foot pole right so that's a big deal
alright so by the time nari comes along
he's not the only guy trying to fight
his way back into the figurative world
but there aren't many of them they're a
small group
Siegel also working in plaster Siegel's
trying to use the process expressively
leaving all the little garmi bits of the
plaster but of course Siegel is mean I
was working with molds yeah so there's
another level of objectification removal
and a weird sense of touch right you
know we're sorry back these guys there's
no touch at all right
there's nothing left of the artists
process these guys there's touch all
right it's literal Siegel was literally
putting the plaster on that girl to make
the mold so there's this weird objective
touch that's totally different than
earring although they would have been
contemporaries right Siegel in there
they probably must have known each other
some yes yeah and he there he came to
Santa Cruz when I was a senior I mean
Siegel did yeah and Siegel's out in New
Jersey
Nerys in California you know they're
sort of poles now Graham Robert Graham
of course is down in down in LA also
basically a contemporary right yeah okay
so the resurgence of the neoclassical
right back to unity contour finish
objectification no touch of the artist
and of course he was assailed repeatedly
for that you know people attacked Graham
for that and you have to say I don't
know if people know the big things he
did for the LA Olympic Gate the two big
torsos naked towards us they really did
look like fashion sculpture I mean they
really did they were massive super buff
athletic torsos anyway so that issue
percolated along and then one other
thing this is okay Bellmer on the left
and on the right Ridge Butler oh yeah
totally weird okay contemporary of jock
and Maddie's English sculptor
contemporary of chadwick and all those
people who were trying to kind of catch
Giacometti in those years after the war
and then Butler at the end takes his
bizarre turn into these cast resin war
strange figures with the wigs on them
okay Butler's the first guy uses the
term post-modernism he gives a he gives
a lecture in 1962 or something where he
starts talking about post-modernism and
then of course Bellmer on the Left all
German over here this is touch you know
I think it would narrate some way you
have to address the the issue of the
female nude and the touch of the the the
processed touch of the sculpture as a
metaphor for literally touching the
figure and and of course Bellmer is
making his weird puppets as an
anti-fascist gesture he's hiding from
the Nazis and asserting his weird
Arata sysm as as a resistance to the
Nazis Butler you know who knows but
anyway the issues of you know sexuality
the female nude touch all these things
that are in Airy were we're percolating
along alright so now I'm going to roar
through a quick survey of Robert Kaplan
so what I'm saying about nary that I
find poignant going up and looking at
these things again is that in a way he
was caught on the horns of this dilemma
on one hand he has this rebellious
romantic expressive urge to just you
know make a million nudes and slash and
cut and chop and you know and then on
the other hand he has this kind of
neoclassical urge you come around the
corner one of those sculptures and you
know they just got that perfect contour
heading down the button into the leg and
around the
back of the classes sorry that's
neoclassicism you know and that sanded
okay my my career has been a similar
conflict between the two impulses but
within the context of post-modernism so
these are early for steel figures these
are direct um you are looking at the
marks of the artists all over these
things with a hammer and they're in this
sort of surreal expressive world then at
some point I kind of pulled away from
that and move to a much more what I'm
now calling neo classical objective
situation in which there are no marks
left at all and the image itself is
there to completely overwhelm the sense
of the artists presence that's the thing
with nari there's always artists the
presence of the artist all over the
thing yeah and then at some point I
started to figure out a way how to maybe
drive the two impulses together put them
set them at war with each other take us
on a neoclassical approach to form and
surface and set it at war with a kind of
completely ante classical content image
and then this sort of disintegration of
the solidity of the thing by putting a
light in it so this is a piece of it
Wesley in the five outer planets would
you explain it claim this series quickly
well this was a set of five doubled
figures that that were set up in the big
gallery at Wesleyan and they were
representations of the five outer
planets and mixed with the
characteristics of the greco-roman gods
whose name
seems the planets come from so Jupiter
Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune and Pluto
and they were in a false perspective
heading out through the gallery so Pluto
was you know fifty feet away when you
walked in and he was in a reduced scale
whereas Jupiter you know was 12 feet
tall boy big guy but you know they're
these big heavy clumsy old gods
so it's an D classical in that sense
okay they're more recently Punchinello
there's a set of things I've done with
this idea of punch who's the sort of
rokoko figure from commedia dell'arte
this is punch makes a public confession
as it was done and pass us there with
George Washington looking on and another
sort of gesture figure from another room
in another room so again these things
have a completely refined surface it's
all about a neoclassical sense of form
and yet a completely ante classical
satirical political genre type of image
and by then you are also using new
materials - yeah the yeah at this you
know as I moved into more traditional
techniques in order to get these kinds
of surfaces right you're going from a
thing where where you're either you know
casting in clay I'm digging a mold and
clay and then casting in plaster which
was the and fiberglass which is the way
the planets were done I mean these are
eventually being enlarged digitally from
a smaller cat from a 10 inch beast and
coming back in a you know or cut foam
and then resurfacing it so these in a
funny way are direct that whole surface
is something that I had to remake in a
gypsum
yeah so but it's you know it's again all
the marks are sanded down taken away
these so this is a mid scale piece of
punched as a magic trick which I have to
say looks pretty prescient at this point
in the days of my buttons bigger than
your button all right
this image is from years ago but I I
feel I nailed the current situation
quite a while back
or maybe I invoked it I hope not and
then finally this is a piece from a from
a series I did called
everything imagined is real after Dante
and these were set of nine diorama type
things that took portions of the first
nine candidates of Dante's Inferno and
used them to create a set of tableaus of
well moderns war and displacement so
this is totally the sort of postmodern
world that nari had nothing to do with
narrative image politics motion sort of
a cinematic sense of form and so these
are things that you know but this time
this world is decades from where he was
at oh yeah
now when you were younger artists did
keynotes for example have an interest to
you at all did who keynotes
keen Holt you know I was out there in
California and I remember seeing those
things and yes of course that stuff
struck me as oh my god so as I said at
that point I was still besotted with
this sort of late abstract expressionist
world of dis over oh yeah Ricky called
her yeah yeah um but I remember seeing
those Keane Holtz's and going why don't
we got here and I only recently saw
Barney's Beanery which now is in
Amsterdam which I had read about in Life
magazine as a probably a high school kid
because that was a big deal and I
remember it very it made a huge shit on
me at the time what the hell is this all
about the guys are the fishbowl heads
and everything yeah yeah yeah yeah but
you go ahead what do you get me see well
let me just first say that Bob and I met
here when I first came to Yale he was
really kind with a whole bunch of
artists in the community to say come on
down we're gonna have a potluck for you
we didn't expect to have an artist be
than
director of this place will come down
and break bread with all of us we had a
great time and ever since then we've
gotten to know each other and artists
and the community better so it's it's
fun to be here with you you mentioned
you know great high school teachers we
both had the rare experience of going to
Andover in my case Exeter and Bob's and
and I think we're exposed to some great
art and but great teachers of art it's
teenagers it certainly was the case for
me with a Addison Gallery and then I
went back to California I've been
encouraged my whole life to make things
from the minute I went to nursery school
to having a workbench aside my father so
I was building furniture and cages for
chickens and pigeons and you know so the
idea of making something was was also
cherished in our family not just using
them the mind and the eye but the hand
was a was a valued expression of
intelligence so that I was I've always
been grateful for that and so when I
went to UC Santa Cruz I actually thought
it was gonna be a marine biologist but
the second year I was there I took a
sculpture class from Gurdon Woods who'd
been the director of the San Francisco
Art Institute from 55 to 65 and that was
when you know you had clifford still you
had Diebenkorn you had visits by Rothko
you had you had you had oh it's just
we've just talking about his work
upstairs
Kent you know well David Park was there
the corner was the other key figure and
you know we've got the figurative artist
that we know so all of those people were
there and they had themselves sort of
fought their way through as you say in
every deep engagement with you know
Abstract Expressionism what was de
Kooning what these people all about so
they were they were wrestling with it
like mad and Park at one point took them
took the strong step to just take all of
his Amex paintings and put him in his
truck and took him out to the dump
Wow just dumped him literally came back
and said I'm going back to the figure
but in going back to the figure he and
the rest of those people never gave up
some aspect of the expressionistic way
of painting or making paint go onto
things or making sculpture that had an
Aries case painted surfaces or the very
kinds of mark making you describe so
you're you just
you know the aspect of the tension and
the work you're absolutely right
so it's really interesting that you
started by showing the work by you also
Mary Frank well Mary Frank's husband was
a guy named Robert Frank and Robert
Frank photographed the couny lived down
in the lower Manhattan to all of those
people but he went over to Paris and
look who he photographed in his studio
this is Giacometti of course so upstairs
we've put up because both joel shapiro
manuel nari
were very influenced by Giacometti i
don't know a sculptor who was and i
certainly was and you see him in the
studio and and this show of manuals
we've called Manuel Mary the human
figure and plaster and on paper because
those are such primary materials that
all artists have access to you use them
in many different ways and they are
frankly completely available and very
very cheap back in the day plaster was
five bucks for a 50-pound bag you could
find paper anywhere and you could find
wire and scraps of wood anywhere and
that's really what a lot of artists and
students had it there and they're
accessible accessibility at the time so
we we wanted to put up some of how
Giacometti worked and to show him in his
studio and this is you know here's an
image you know a wonderful drawing of a
studio and these are by morass the the
wonderful photographer we have wonderful
works of hers in the collection and
again do you see Giacometti in his
studio and it's a tiny little kind of a
hovel of a place I read recently it was
around 400 square feet it's actually
really small you know 15 by 10 yeah yeah
he had a little he had that little stove
on one side and here you see one of his
images you can see paintings just
leaning up against the studio wall back
there right and and you can see he's
just fighting his way into these things
with plaster and they're in in process
here and he's just covering the armature
with plaster and starting to work these
things out and here he is again looking
at some of these pieces you can see a
whole bunch of paintings they're just
bob was saying you know he never felt
total satisfaction with him he never
felt he could kind of totally fix the
image of the person
finished yeah or gives you that feeling
he made a decision that it was finished
yeah
when he'd say go ahead and CAG and it to
his brother Diego and say cast it yeah
and yeah yeah the other thing if you
look at some of these two you'll see
that the trademark heavy bronze that he
then cast at the bottom which made
impossible to stand up really came out
of the fact that the brothers also made
a lot of furniture and and and a lot of
it was made cast in bronze and what is
the hardest thing to make stand-up in
bronze if you're making furniture a lamp
right so these thin figures you know in
a some some way to some degree they're
they're skinny and these big heavy bases
are what helps keep them standing up so
you know this doesn't go unnoticed by
people when you admire your work you
also sort of go well where's this all
coming from right he also had a thing
about feet like a tree spreading its
roots on the ground and then the base
becomes this is their well I don't have
an image of it but one of his most
famous sculptures that every sculptor
knows is the city square piece where's
the base is about this thick and you
have these tiny little figures that are
in the public square they're not going
to bump into each other but they're
sharing space and frankly the room
upstairs the way I've installed manually
Riis full-size formal is an homage to
that piece
resting lee that piece of course all the
guys are walking yep and the girl yeah
and the guys Mary upstairs so actually
the catalog for manual show literally
came in bound today it's it just came
into the bookstore three hours ago so
it's out there and in there I've written
a long essay in tribute to him and how
he came up and now he taught now I got
to meet and be his TA and do things with
him but what I want to say about him is
you know this was it was very true that
a lot of the artists in that time we're
coming out of either the Korean
or world war two they were all coming to
art school if they went at all often on
the GI Bill and there he was no
different he he actually came in the
Korean did GI Bill and one of the very
first people he actually met before he
got involved with making as works in
figurative works with Peter vulgus the
great professor at Berkeley who was
working in clay and and Manuel was
actually studying he wanted to get into
Berkeley ISM is an engineering major he
had had to support his his mother and as
daughter's sister because the father and
brother had died during World War two
she had to drop out of high school and
when they were all working in the fields
as early mexican-american immigrants he
went through a very tough place to get
to thinking that he actually could go to
a place like UC Berkeley that was not an
easily imagined thing for a kid who grew
up in Warren in Sanger California so
there was a drive in him from the minute
you meet him there's an energy to the
guy and so working with people like
focus very early on I'll show you this
because we just bought this piece it was
one of the very early ceramic loop
pieces he made and you can see his
engagement with color and his
willingness to use bold color in an
expressionistic way in a ceramic piece
and there were four of these made and
they were they were in the famous funk
show at Berkeley in 1967 everyone yeah
Neri was these one the two of these
ceramic loops so he had that before he
went to the Art Institute in this 55 to
65 period and there of course he met
some of these amazing teachers here's
David parks this is the studio this
amazing one of his last great great
paintings we were able to acquire for
Yale and of course you know we have
great Diebenkorn in the collection so
I'm just showing you a couple and and
but those were the kinds of artists who
were on the faculty they weren't really
that old they were just getting their
sea legs
de Kooning it was coming out to Berkeley
in 1960 and making meeting them that
Rothko was come out you had Gustin
coming out there was actually a
tremendous interchange of artists from
the East Coast but not critics nor
healer interactions which a lot of
people don't fully understand about
transactions but right in the midst of
that decade in comes the John Brown as
one of the students and she and Manuel
she and Manuel met each other right away
there was a whole lot of interest and
passion and one another they eventually
got married were married for six years
had a child they got divorced but he was
he was she was his first muse and this
was one piece we had to buy because I
wanted to get it because it's a very
early one of his plaster heads in which
he also drew on it and and one of the
things you know well notice when you go
upstairs is not only the manual work
directly directly in plaster but the way
he painted on it or the way he made the
kind of marks you described whether they
were marks made with gouging tools or
whether they were marks subscribed with
a pencil or with paint he was
comfortable going in any direction as a
way to manipulate the surface and the
Bob's right when you go to bronze or you
go to marble a whole lot of that just
disappears it's gone well there but it's
there as a shadow and then trace as a
residual it just doesn't have the same
immediacy and of course the actual this
is probably a pencil pencil yeah you
could erase that you know I mean
literally there's that sense of you know
it has that fragility to it yeah so it's
also still describing the form which is
interesting hours later he was more
interested in contradicting them for
yeah well if you knew John Brown this is
it's the her own self-portrait it's
whoops whoops I went the wrong way let's
see you can see then you go from here to
here that's really how John looked I
knew her not for a hard night of
drinking perhaps well I was there I
wasn't there for any of that but anyway
the two of them met and and I've been
able to get some food in the catalogue
of the photographs I'm I'm up here
better than these in the PowerPoint but
here's a picture of them when they're
sharing the studio together and and
again back then no one had any money
they often rented little places so they
were jammed in there together and you
can see she's got big paintings with for
the
stuff going on leaning to the right here
and he's got plaster heads you see
whether these made out of scraps of wood
they're holding them up and they're just
making work work like mad together and
very soon these senior professors say
wow you're one of us you're as good as
us they just accepted them and embraced
him in the most amazing way
Burton Woods who became my mentor at UC
Santa Cruz was the president at that
time I was telling Bob there's a funny
moment where Gurdon when Manuel first
enrolled the person running the
sculpture studio mr. wood you have to
come with me quick right away and stop
him stop this quick um he said what are
you talking about you've got to come
stop him and he said calm down he walked
down to the sculpture studio man don't
use the entire scope plaster supply for
the whole semester in one week if he
looked at what was there Jesus Christ
just keep ordering plaster as much as
you need
also don't ever stop it but what was
also interesting is within three years
his GI benefits for update no one cared
about degrees saying well you made the
decision not to go to art school at some
point you didn't have to have an MFA you
move sometimes from artist to place and
he said mr. woods my GI benefits are
running out I've got to leave now and
thank you I've had a great teasing no
you're not gonna leave I knew on the
faculty next year so very early on Joan
and and Manuel given a real place of
with within their peers and it's
important to understand that all of
these places had younger people
sometimes teaching who were only 10 or
12 years their senior so they they often
treated you as more as a peer rather
than this 60 year old professor with a
twenty year old student and that's
changed a lot over time you know given
factors as things so when so when Manuel
left the San Francisco Art Institute he
got a studio over on Connecticut Street
in Potrero Hill District of San
Francisco which now has become a
fabulously expensive place to live but
you got a place for nothing there and he
started to just fill that place up all
the time with plaster sculptures as a
matter of fact the
cover image for the catalog shows a
whole bunch of his plaster figures out
on the back little porch lit of the
studio and he made work so fast this is
just a matter of heads they would just
he would just be making him he do
certain amount of him on sticks then
he'd go back and he put one up on the
stand and he'd carve on it he right on
it he'd do things to it and and you can
see how these you know in some cases
also very much related to Giacometti
it's at some level but he would just
eventually push him out the back door
and dump him but no one was buying this
stuff you had to have room to make more
stuff so woods used to go see me said he
used to just throw away you know
scores of these figures and heads kept
some but it was really as you say almost
a are just an adamant rush to keep so
the other thing that was really true at
the time was every one of these artists
drew constantly and they were keeping
the hands limber all the time with
whatever paper they could get Diebenkorn
Bischoff par call them they get often
met together they'd have jazz music
someone playing the piano and they would
just draw draw draw
scats of drawings here you see the two
figure drawing the other thing there he
did that's similar bothers that in this
case this this drawing is as is collage
you do something to a thing you do
something else to it thing you do
something else to it the same way he
goes back to the figurative plaster
pieces and keeps manipulating or
coloring and then sanding gouging
chopping you know you often wonder when
and how he stops which was also an issue
with Pollock and others when he when he
stopped always there when you lose
abrasion when do you lose a piece or
Wendy when's the right moment if you
talk to Bill Tucker about this right now
he'll say that's a key issue when is it
done well yeah because you're the whole
idea is to be in this river in this
stream and basically you're just
stepping out of everything alright I
stopped yeah yeah so that's a real issue
that's constant in there he's life I
completely agree with you
and and these wonderful heads he's
basically been interested in the full
figure in the head
the portrait easily done a beautiful
there's a there's a piece upstairs a
portrait of marked a super or eerie car
we carved it three times over twelve
years you know where do you find mark is
no no I didn't quite get mark I got to
go back and do more with Mark as they
both knew each other and traveled
between New York and Berkeley where de
Subaru taught for quite some time so you
have these pieces like this the big
change in near his life came when he met
maria julia and i happen to be is that
graduate school UC davis at the time and
I was manuals ta and he bought this
beautiful you can see his studio was an
old church he'd bought in Benicia
California and it was just a fabulous
space to work in and he met Marie Julia
and she became his muse and model for 40
years that's essentially the the all the
images you see or one way or another
come out of poses she did directly in
the studio here you can see he's she's
got a comfortable chair she's wearing a
robe to stay warm and he's working
directly in plaster probably having in
this case just working from live poses
sometimes he would draw many many images
when I was is TA and was mixing up the
plaster for a class he would often come
in off these big working Jags and he'd
be all you know looking you'll see some
pictures where he looks old unshaven and
this that and the other and then he'd
clean up and he'd have Italian loafers
with no socks and linen pants and a
white tank top he's handsome as hell and
come in with a double expresso when a
paintbrush and he'd sit in the back of
the class and watching the model Ivey
slepping around rather this help and the
students and he just do a little he'd
probably throw thirty sketches on the
floor by the end of the class that we'd
sleep him up and throw him away
every week it's a little bit like a
great athlete on stick you get you know
you keep pitching you keep memory so
that was that was also an aspect of a
work ethic of these artists I think it's
really important and and yet there's
also the way in which he instructed us
I found out very very clear since that
that there's a reflective time needed
when you make art and so so here's he's
working one way with Mary Julie in the
studio and here's another way where
she's posing absolutely live and he's
starting to work on a plaster piece in
the studio and at the same time he might
be doing drawings like this that look
almost like I Sumi mush dog so quick and
and that had grown out of a much more
classical way of drawing and Mary
interestingly enough it was the first
person to give me the magazine's of the
Japanese goat eye performance group
these guys were wired into some stuff on
going the other way
the California thing they were looking
looking you know looking West yeah
so they yeah they they were all aware of
Japan so that was interesting so then
you know all these different ways in
which the Mary Julia would pose were her
things you know almost like a crow you
know prowling I mean they had a wild
relationship I'm sure was both
passionately hot and heavy at times and
other times they were just at each
other's throats you could there is some
times of violence to it that you allude
to right right and I don't mean that you
know I don't think they ever beat each
other up that's again an ongoing part of
the the whole expressionist tradition is
that it tends to be read either
correctly or incorrectly as you know an
evidence of anxiety angst rage you know
violence fury I mean there's always that
I mean I just went saw the Leon Gallup
show the same thing you know that IDs
work in those paintings or that meat
cleaver and this so there's this
undercurrent in his case is not an
undercurrent it's absolutely explicit
know that that expressionist rage of the
sounds are there and de Kooning's
women's you know those paintings were
soundly criticized by many people except
for for the with the Duke I always feel
there's a
sense of humor about it yeah the big
grinning face and then you know the clam
digger those crazy sculptures yeah you
know they're funny yeah for his Nerys I
don't think this much sense of humor in
what Nerys no it's not it's not part of
his it's not part of his ethos I would
agree with that so the other thing what
we didn't really mention but you know
here's a case in point where you know
once you once you come up with a pose
and anyone to start working directly in
plaster you have to create then this is
true for lots of art you've talked about
it you have to build armatures of
different kind to basically start to
support the way you're gonna apply
plaster and plaster when you first start
to work forth it's nothing more really
than it's like making a pancake batter
you know you make a big tub of stuff you
throw the water in if you want to slow
it down
I mean speed it up you can put salt in
you can do different things to make it
behave slower faster you can tint it you
can you can work it easily when it's
just cast and not fully dry you can re
wet it and add to it but there is a
trajectory drew there's a bell curve
yeah it starts out wet and there's
there's not a long moment there where
you can really pick a handful of it up
and make a stick yeah and so when you
look at those Nerys you can see that
there's that moment when it really is
being applied wet and he can be like the
hairs through it yeah exactly and then
you have to do other things to it or you
have to remove some of it there's only
so much you can kind of cover the
armature which to get a certain form and
then you have to make other decisions
and that's the deal with the Tucker's
the struct light is it's a much longer
slower thing either
yeah he's Gorman that stuff on and
hitting that sort of foaming fecal
surface that's really very different
than what yeah so I used to watch him
work this way you know where he'd start
just with the wet stuff you know and
it's big mess it's all over his hands
and he's just getting it on there and
getting the basic form done so some of
the some of his works have that feeling
you know he's got a pose he gets it
finally up to a certain point gets and
then
you know if he doesn't like it all this
the other thing you can do at this stage
is you can just snap an arm off you know
change the pose if you don't like you
know it feels full scale change it up to
a point I think that's one of the
interesting things about nari that I
mean I don't know if you're going to
talk about this boy when he started out
he was making those armatures out of
wood yeah and so they pretty much stand
up because he you know and then he's
getting a little bit of but then later
he started making the armatures out of
metal and that's when they could crawl
you know where he could bend that thing
around and she could crawl like or you
could those know what those are
basically wire okay why in other words
something tensile you couldn't do that
with wood yeah so I saw him do some you
know sometimes he could alter something
rather severely but mostly altered it by
adding more now doing chopping things
off sanding it doing adding paint and
sort of staying with it for a time in
which you finally had to stood decide
when do you stop when you stop was the
big question with this pieces but
there's also I mean another compelling
thing about these is that there is a
sort of you know there's a sense with
Expressionism of the time of the making
again you know when you look at those
neoclassical things like time has been
erased the idea is that they're eternal
where is this there's a speed to it
which you got to witness and you still
see it you feel it in the object is that
there's a rapidity and there's a record
of the speed even if it's somewhat
illusionary yeah yeah the other thing
sometimes the poses would come out of
again something in the studio or some
you know another object would come into
play you know you could you'd make a
figure and you'd make it in response to
a seated you know situation and put it
on the chair or have it crawl actually
on the floor and all the time he's
making wonderful figurative works on
paper now one of the things that really
interested me at when I was a student is
that Davis and this was just as I was
just deciding you know whether he wanted
me to be his TA as he came
the gallery one time when he laid down
some plywood sheets I think there were
about four sheets and he did this in the
little student-faculty gallery that was
right off where we worked and he said
I'm just gonna work on a few figures a
couple figures for a few days and he
came in there and he just started to
build them up from you know from the
building the armature first started to
lay on the plaster and he'd sit in a
chair and sometimes just look at him for
a while so we'd come in at all what's
happening with him so this was also
really interesting to see someone
stopping and having this moment of
contemplation what have I done what
needs to be done next because he wasn't
just someone who worked fervently
without stop to get to these things
there is a lot of reflective time and I
think that's a really interesting thing
for students to learn too that you as
much as you're you're using your hands
to make things you do spend time
considering what the next moves are
going to be or whether it's going in the
right direction or what needs to be done
next so also I mean another thing about
an Aries work is that most of it is
life-size that's right so he's sitting
in there surrounded by his life-size
figures yeah so there's this one-on-one
relationship and so you know one of the
key things in the successful Nerys
to me is that there's both the external
observe sense of the figure and the
internal sense of you know what you
might called the equipoise the the
balance the inside what it feels like to
be standing inside that figure and of
course by worrying with the same model
for decades he got way in there with her
he had an actual sense maybe not quite
what it felt like to be her but what it
felt like for her to stand that way and
so he's sitting in there projecting some
of his
sense of body occupying space into these
plaster things he's made and I think the
sense of you know how much can you
possess someone exactly was a part of
the tension of the relationship love and
how much of that pushback dominate and
how much is and there is not there's not
much sense in Airy it's one of the
things I find poignant is there's this
lingering moment of where you feel the
image does start to dominate the artist
and then the artistry sorts the
dominance on the image there's that
there is a battle going a psychological
battle going on in there and it's I
don't know I think it's one of the
poignant things about the sculptor well
the other thing is when he draws you
know that is his sense of the sensuality
of his hand and where he's seeking that
as you see sometimes you see it in parts
of the sculpture sometimes you see it
fully in drawings like this or you see
it in tension mm-hmm you know and so
different than that sort of you know
slightly creepy ossified sense from the
seagulls you know that sort of death
thing of the seagull is always it's
always kind of a corpse because it's a
cast from a real person who's not there
anymore
whereas Nerys is working toward some
sort of real presence well don't forget
near the seagull worked with the plaster
he worked with was orthopedic plaster
was God's plaster often saturated with
dry postures like when you break your
leg or something that's what the mold so
so you know you'd get covered with
Vaseline or whatever you get some
drawers in your nose and mouth and I
watched I got to know him because he
came to Santa Cruz my senior year
wonderful man on whose farm worth of
happenings were first done yes yes he
came to Santa Cruz my senior year so I
was I was exposed to this wild tension
between the performative well exam and
classical studio work in a big big way
is in my youth
and don't forget that when there he's
doing this I'm gonna show you how I make
it that's exactly what Peter Volquez
used to do he would love to get in front
of students show him how to throw a big
stack all right and and get them totally
hooked by the mastery of how he could
work this material there he had some of
the same that's that coming out of yeah
out of that Expressionism you know
Pollak you know I don't paint nature I
am nature he's like that performative
idea I mean it's it got dismissed but
the idea of action painting had there
was some reality to it it was a
performance in time yeah so after I went
through Davis and studied this guy had a
fantastic experience getting to go his
studio and all I moved to San Francisco
became a young professor about the last
working casket factory South of Market
Street and built a couple lofts upstairs
and we opened a big space called ad
Langton Street which became one of the
great alternative art spaces and all of
us who were artists involved with it at
some point would do some kind of a show
or wanted to introduce artists of our
own peer group or teachers worked at the
place so I asked Manuel to come in 1976
with Mary Julia and I said we've got a
week for you here we'll have an opening
next weekend could you do a figure ad a
full-figured a see if you could do a
full figure today he said Wow yeah he
said well yeah I'd like to try that and
so we got in a ton of plaster I said
just bring all your stuff in see what
you can make and at the end I don't want
you to clean any of it up and leave all
the tools just walk out at the end the
same way it would be like when I was in
the studio with you because there was
something about seeing you know all the
chips and all the stuff you know that
was really when it got all cleaned up
and put up on these big bases in the
regular commercial galleries I never
long I've seen it the same way oh yeah
this is that this is that opportunity
that the expressionist sort of opens up
to identify for the viewer to identify
with the artist yeah that's part of what
it's all about it's like oh I can feel
how he made that mark I could do that
yeah so here's an area at 80 Langdon
Street you can see Mary Julius she's got
her clothes on there but he's been
started to work on a number of figures
and here's another
image of at this point the manuals
standing back yet again sort of taking
the time to look at how things are going
I think this was on the fifth day I
think they're out there five figures in
there yeah off to the side and one of
those is upstairs actually he not only
did 70 state one extra day did eight and
so we postponed their opening one day
and and in in the end people loved it
and there was something about that show
that he always felt very grateful for it
helped him realize that his work could
be seen in a in San Francisco in the
gallery context in a different way than
he was getting in the commercial
galleries so you know we stayed in touch
but I was frankly quite uh surprised
when he and his trust called up and said
listen you were his favorite student he
wants you to have whatever you want for
you I said well Jesus are you serious
and I didn't said yes I went out there
and all this stuff with exception of two
pieces as a gift from his is there is
there any equivalent collection of Nerys
early work anywhere else no and and and
you know I only I took I think two
bronzes everything is either plaster
works on paper that's and I really
honestly maintain and I think all the
artists I know no man you'll think his
best work is in plaster now dealers
don't like it collectors don't like it
they want the bronze they want the
marble but whether you like his work or
not
I absolutely maintain the plaster work
and the drawings are the best okay and
I've been a museum - right they've taken
some of these other works I said I
wouldn't even touch him mhm I just don't
think they're anywhere nearly successful
so that's a funny thing isn't it it
feels so strongly about an artist but
not always feel that they hit it in the
other medium they sometimes do but not
not with the regularity the whole
poignancy of the thing is so much more
present in the plaster yeah you know
it's like I slept there in that gallery
just you know trying to really relax and
just sit there with those life-size
figures and sort of take the whole thing
in for a while you know it's like to me
but called the mind mind the whole sort
of business of the
of the you know the brick D and
alienation effect you know there you
start to get absorbed in the presence of
the figure the image itself starts to
kind of come alive and then all that
slashing and cutting and paint and
everything you know they're life-sized
figures you're starting to identify with
the figure and then he breaks it all
that manipulation breaks and said no no
no this is just a hunk of blaster it's a
piece of material you know and that's
that sort of Brechtian thing of letting
the identification of the viewer grow
and then stopping it breaking it and
then setting it in motion again and and
these things are full of that where you
start to kind of I'm starting to really
believe it and then he says no you can't
do that this is a sculpture and so
that's it to me it's a you know it's
that poignant modernist you think if I'm
not going to I'm not gonna abandon
materiality and just go off into the
mists of image identification and and
and all of that he hung in there that
way and that starts to break up a little
bit
with particularly with the marbles yeah
where you start to even though they're
very object light and he would you know
finish a marble and then take a can of
you know red enamel paint just the big
brush mark across the marble trying to
you know break up that preciousness that
sense of the marble as a you know as a
complete object they could sort of as
you say that you could own in a
completely different way than the artist
trying to own the image Maria Julia it's
a different thing you know one thing I
want to say is now director of a museum
for you know 20 years is that I never
had to you know really look really
seriously a Greek and Roman art to
approve acquisitions before I took this
job and all of a sudden I come from you
know
contemporary scene a gallery of American
art and Here I am with a really good
rather notable Department of ancient art
here and you know I started looking at
these things and there really is some of
these figures were meant to be very
idealized but you know we're used to an
aesthetic where their noses have been
knocked off their arms are broken the
legs are gouged they've been hit by
plows when they were dug up an Italian
fields there I mean they've been nicked
in another kind of way by time and
circumstance in history and yet we're
used to thinking they're beautiful and
then their time tonight well so I'm used
to this aesthetic but some of them the
way the breaks happen in what happened
aren't so nice and I said well you know
is that really a piece you want or what
is it about that aesthetic that we're
used to now because something's happened
to it i we were talking earlier I said
how are we gonna feel about a Donald
judge box for six hundred years from now
if it's been kicked in with your feet on
two sides and got big dents in it you
know how does art last and change over
time is something that yeah yeah the
fragment and the fragmentation of course
was like a huge opening contemporary art
obviously that relates to modern sense
of anxiety and yet at the same time you
know these these these things and in
Greece and Rome where Africa often
painted when they were oh you bet they
were they were colorful so Manuel's
going over and want him to expose
himself to everything in in Italy and
Greece the way he did you know every
year summary go to Carrara the the
quarry man thought he was insane to be
painting his pieces you know yeah and
yet he looked at that and and he was
grappling with you know can that be done
again yeah and of course you know when
you're trying classical classical is a
huge black box yeah
which includes an enormous broad number
of things I mean the cliches of
classical art the venus de milo on this
kind thing most of those are actually
Hellenistic those are
late you know and and so yeah and of
course
the actual corpus of classical art
includes all sorts of things that that
something like Mary might or might not
you know a lot of a lot of almost all
classical statuary is narrative in one
way or other you always know who it is
it's not just an abstract figure and he
does he does quote some of those
classical poses up there you'll see that
know if you you know if you for sure
you weave yammered enough you know how
about any of you have any questions you
know we've got a little bit of time if
you want to pose a question or tell us
we're out of our minds or but I don't
want I didn't want to show I want you to
go upstairs if you haven't seen the show
since we're open to 8:00 I didn't want
to show images of the exhibition I
really want you to experience that in
person and the book is in and it does
have we one reason we waited for the
book to come out as we wanted to shoot
the installation well so people don't
get here get to see his work I think
installed in a way he would really have
loved and I showed him the catalog was
out in California and he did love the
way the show is installed it's great
anything any normally doesn't get that
kind of treatment and you know a bad a
bad frame can kill a painting and a bad
installation of sculpture jammed up
against the wall can really ruin it now
that we know those things spaced out
that way and and that was something I
think I learned from watching him and my
own teachers said you know sculpture
something you want to be able to walk
around you want me to look at it from
all sides it needs to be ideally to
satisfy you you'd like it to be in us
it's about relief you know they want it
to be
he was as was they got he was really
interested in the back yeah it's not
just their some of them seem very
frontal but so anybody now we're gonna
start the yammering issue yeah here's a
mic
you gotta hold it up closer you want
they want but it's not on
testing testing area closer pretend your
Mick Jagger right up there but Allen
laughed and said that every artist in
the Bay Area had an area in their back
yard so he was extremely prolific right
unbelievably so he gave things away were
all the time he destroyed a lot of his
work that's a problem sculptures
sculptors where do you store all the
stuff you wanna go out to his studio
look at his problem I I threw away a lot
of my stuff before I moved east I just
took it to the dump I couldn't afford
storage anymore oh yeah these you know
these pieces itself for you know 150 to
250 thousand a pop now these plaster
pieces no he's 88 years old and he's a
very frail health and that's why I
wanted to do this while he was still
alive
Charles Coles was his dealer down in New
York all through the 80s and 90s and
they were they were say it was mostly
the bronze and the marble yeah yeah that
I think that's what during his sort of
working life was probably his real I
mean you're right and the problem is the
plasters weren't known on the East Coast
you know so I don't think his best work
ever made it to the East Coast and the
way it was sort of a rumor to those of
us who were interested but you never got
to see him and a lot of people weren't
interested you know it was definitely a
Bay Area thing and New York was pretty
resistant anyone else up there
it's all perfectly clear okay well
thanks for coming go up and take a look
at the show okay thanks
