THE PARTHENON FRIEZES
Gurari Collections
460 Harrison Avenue, South End of Boston
November 4 - November 28, 2011
WENDY ARTIN'S PARTHENON FRIEZES ARE IN THE PRESS! To read, click on each one:
Cate McQuaid, "Watercolors That Mirror Historic Marble Frieze", The Boston Globe, November 16, 2011
Grace Dane Mazur, "Translating Marble Onto Paper", The Arts Fuse, November 17, 2011
(click on the box at the upper left for black text on a white background)
Franklin Einspruch, "Liquid on Stone", the New York Sun, November 16, 2011
Danielle Boudrot, "The Parthenon Friezes", A Thoughtful Eye Blog, November 7, 2011
To read an introduction by Alexander Purves and a sonnet by Karl Kirchwey, published in the Parthenon Frieze catalogue, visit ABOUT or scroll down
PRESS RELEASE
Wendy Artin's November exhibition entitled THE PARTHENON FRIEZES, at Gurari Collections, is a demonstration of patience, endurance, visual insight and painting mastery. Galleried at the British Museum, the Parthenon sculptures enjoy world renown for their representational beauty, conflict of a storied past, and their sheer magnitude of sculptural presence. This new series of large monochromatic watercolor paintings are life-size in scale so as to best evoke the splendor of this ancient parade.
Undertaking the painting of the Parthenon Friezes was a long desired goal of Ms. Artin. After many years of observation and sketching, the last two years have been dedicated to making this vision a reality. The watercolor paintings attempt to inspire the same awe that we feel when we are in front of the physical bearing of the marble reliefs. Notwithstanding, Artin works the surface of the paper so as "to reveal the very tactile experience of wet pigment on porous paper creating an illusion that fades in and out."
The marble stones themselves, while exquisitely chiseled at the time of their creation, have, over time, been worn into rich and delicate abstracts of what were once three dimensional and refined. Sometimes only indeterminable fragments remain. Wendy Artin allows the image to emerge from the paper with no discernable start or finish. She captures all the gradations of tone within one wet wash, quickly, before the brushstroke dies, she pushes dark in here and lifts light out there, keeping the watercolor fresh and light on the surface.
What we perceive to be the materiality of marble and the rhythmic movement of figures in relief, we experience as the elegant harmony of Antiquity with the organic crumbling and stains of time. Artin wants the illusion to be "almost total, for the realism to pull the viewer in at the same time that the marks remind one that this is simply wet pigment that has stained the fibers of paper."
Moving from the inanimate nature of stone, the Friezes as paintings in watercolor by Wendy Artin, are startlingly alive on a papered surface. To tease out the many thousands of years of this storied work of art, and to do so in the most ethereal of mediums, allows us to experience a new presence of these fabled Parthenon Friezes.
Gurari Collections is honored to present Wendy Artin's eighth solo exhibition of artwork. THE PARTHENON FRIEZES are exhibited November 4 - 28, 2011, in our gallery in the South End of Boston, 460 Harrison Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, 02118. The work will continue to be shown in December.
Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Sunday 12 - 4 p.m. or by appointment. Telephone: 617.367.9800; email: gerard@gurari.com
Wendy Artin : The Parthenon Friezes
The Parthenon Friezes enjoy a room of their own in the British Museum. These fifth century marble reliefs are arranged along the walls in a linear sequence that surrounds the visitor. A skylight distributes even light over the horses, their riders and all the actors in the great procession as it makes its way around the room. Everywhere are stamping legs, creaking wheels, snorts and bellows - a maelstrom of activity straining to break out of the few inches of marble into which it has been compressed. But an uncanny quiet is present in the room. Action coexists with stillness, clamor with silence.
The power of this experience has moved generations of visitors. Wendy Artin has responded in her own way - as an artist. "For years I have been dreaming of painting them. I wanted to spend a long time staring at them, drawing them, getting lost in the cracks and relief, understanding the rhythmic movement of the heads, the bodies, the legs." She has come to know every swelling, every crevice. The watercolors are images of the sculptures, to be sure, but they pulse with a vitality of their own that is quite distinct from that of the originals. And this vitality comes from the act of painting.
Painting continues a process that began when the sculptor first captured the swirling mayhem of the actual procession as it thundered through real space in real time. He squeezed this activity into the shallow space between the face of the stone and the background plane. The watercolors further collapse these figures onto the surface of a piece of paper and add a dimension not present in the sculpture - that of ambiguity. The painter has the freedom to let an edge dissolve, to focus our attention on a neck, on a nostril, and leave other areas to be completed by our imaginations. We participate in the making of the image.
Our first response to these extraordinary paintings is to enjoy the cinematic rhythm of the legs, the draperies, the bodies - the power of the overall composition. However we are well repaid if we take the time to let our eyes graze slowly over the surface of the watercolor - to watch the artist pull the forms from the paper. Her brush has caressed every contour. Our eyes follow her hand as it guides the water over the rag paper leaving some spots dry, drenching others - always alive, always becoming. Working back from the white of the paper, applying water and pigment, deepening the darks, she is excavating shadows much as a sculptor carves into a block of marble to reveal form.
Two thousand years have taken their toll on the reliefs. An elbow vanishes; a knee appears from nowhere. But when we look at the sculptures we tend to overlook the missing fragments. Our eyes skip over the gaps, and we ignore the background plane. In the paintings every bit of marble - smooth or rough, intended or accidental - is examined and appreciated. In one piece, erosion has laid bare the texture of the stone allowing figures to appear to emerge from the fractured shadows - like apparitions. New stories arise.
In their original locations on the Parthenon, these reliefs would have been shielded from the brilliant Greek sun - tucked up in the shadows high above our heads and illuminated only by indirect light from below - sunlight reflected up off the marble floor. In the British Museum, however, a gentle London light drifts down, washing over the contours of the white Pentelic marble. Artin has been able to capture the effect of this light using water to soften the shadows and grade the darks. But as opposed to sculpture, the watercolors have a luminosity of their own, the reflection of light off the paper itself. No matter how dense the wash, this radiance is never lost.
Wendy Artin's Parthenon Friezes are meditations on works of art that have haunted her for many years. She is an artist of consummate skill, working in a medium over which she has complete control. However this skill never calls attention to itself. It is always used in service to the original sculptures. In these paintings she has been able to demonstrate the sensitivity and precision of her observation, but more significant - even miraculous - she has been able to convey the depth of her feeling - her wonder, her admiration and her love for these ancient marbles.
Alexander Purves
Yale School of Architecture
October 2011
North Frieze Block XLIII, Figures 118-20
We know they lived short lives in a world of slavery:
is this why their faces are so beautiful and grave,
one wearing a soft cap, pooled at his shoulders,
another naked, the line of his back
like a tornado's funnel, in a monochrome canter
riding into the gruel and blizzard of time
that by now has scoured their tack away,
the horses superb beneath three young men,
cheek pressed to throatlatch in a curve so powerful
it will never come unsprung, even in the explosion
of their own stalled momentum, veins on their bellies
and hocks and forearms standing in pure joy,
reined in at the last possible moment
before plunging off the edge into eternity?
Karl Kirchwey, October 2011
Andrew Heiskell Arts Director
American Academy in Rome
Professor of the Arts
Bryn Mawr College