Sculpture has always fascinated me. Intensely physical in its materials and processes, it offers us things as much as images. To sculpt is to think in three dimensions—to imagine and anticipate multiple possible viewpoints and encounters between people and objects in space. And this fall, sculpture takes center stage at the Art Institute with two major exhibitions.
Early October brings a presentation devoted to Camille Claudel, an artist who has long captivated me with her unique ability to convey emotion and meaning through inventive depictions of the human body—sometimes with the slightest gesture of a hand or tilt of a head. The exhibition brings together over half of her surviving compositions, tracing her tragically short but remarkable career as well as her struggle for artistic, professional, and social independence. Immersing myself in the French artist’s life and work for the last five years has been deeply rewarding, and I can’t wait to share her work and her story with our audiences.
Just a few weeks later, in mid-November, our spotlight will shine on Europe’s most celebrated Neoclassical sculptor with Canova: Sketching in Clay. While Antonio Canova is best known today for his exquisitely finished marble statuary, his compositions began as quick and rough clay sketches, an approach I’ll share more about in the next issue of this magazine. These entrancing objects bear the direct marks of the sculptor’s fingers and tools as he raced to materialize his ideas in soft, damp clay.
Materiality continues as a theme with other extraordinary offerings at the museum this fall. Among Friends and Rivals: Caravaggio in Rome centers on two rarely lent works by an artist who exploited the drama of light and shadow to create a palpable sense of three-dimensionality in his paintings. Dan Friedman: Stay Radical reveals an experimental designer’s playful blurring of conventional distinctions between two- and three-dimensionality. And Unsewn Time presents works by artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed, whose strongly physical creative processes include the use of her entire body as a tool.
In the galleries, we have the opportunity to confront these remarkable works in person, to experience them as objects in the world and be moved and inspired in ways impossible through a screen. So after you learn about them here, make a date to visit soon for your next encounter with the real thing.
—Emerson Bowyer, Searle Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
