"Marble" Exhibition
Gagosian Gallery Madison Avenue
This event has ended.
Gagosian Gallery presents an exhibition that explores the enduring fascination of marble, beginning with ancient idols, through classical and Renaissance statuary to twentieth century and contemporary sculpture.
A sensual yet resilient natural material, over time marble developed a rich visual vocabulary together with a constantly mutating symbolism. Our Neolithic ancestors carved it into primal representations of the human form. The Ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped marble and utilized it in all manner of civic edification, both architectural and sculptural; whereas in medieval times, it was vilified as idolatry by zealous clerics. During the Renaissance and on through the Enlightenment, it became charged with newly expressionistic significance. Twentieth century and contemporary artists have tended to invert, shift, and play with all these approaches and their references, rendering marble ironic, enigmatic, and at times even incongruous, Thus marble links various spiritual and secular artistic traditions as they have reinvented themselves throughout history, just as the powerful aura that it exudes transcends time and change.
In this exhibition, Anatolian and Cycladic idols presage the modernist abstractions and biomorphic forms of Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and Isamu Noguchi. A delicately carved Renaissance head, (once belonging to Andy Warhol,) prefigures the tongue-in-cheek gravitas of Jeff Koons's elaborately crafted (self)-creation myth. The austere geometries of works by Carl Andre, Jenny Holzer, and Marc Newson are echoed in an exquisite painted marble fragment by Brice Marden, providing yet another counterpoint to this rich ensemble.
Media
Schedule
from February 12, 2009 to April 11, 2009
Artist(s)
Alberto Giacometti, Jeff Koons, Mark Newson, David Smith et al.