Marisol at the Brooks

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Marisol at The Brooks

0 @3 6 $4.99 $4.99 The Culture Issue —1 USA JULY 10, 2014 JULY 4 UNTIL DISPLAY Marisol Escobar, 1969 ALL IN THE

Marisol FAMILYEscobar’s long and winding road has led to a comprehensive retrospective of her work at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

! by eileen townsend 1

n the late spring of 1968, Roger L. Stevens, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, received a typewrit-

ten letter from 115 Stonewall Place in Memphis, Tennessee. Marisol Th e letter — dated June 10th and penned by a man named American (b. France, 1930) The Family, 1969 Waldo Zimmermann — called upon Stevens to stop his “highly Mixed media: Wood, oﬀ ensive ... violation of the First Amendment,” or else face po- plastic, neon, glass, 88 x 56 x 65 inches tential legal action. What Stevens had done was unconscionable, wrote (223.5 x 142.2 x 165.1 cm) Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, IZimmermann, a highly visible local activist who frequently made the Memphis, TN; Commissioned for Brooks Memorial Art Gallery Memphis papers with his left-leaning opinions on abortion, environ- through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts mentalism, and freedom of speech. Writing, he said, on behalf of the and matching funds from the Memphis Arts Council, Brooks Fine Th omas Jeﬀ erson Chapter of the Americans United for the Separation Arts Foundation and Brooks Art of Church and State, Zimmermann claimed that the National Endow- Gallery League 69.5 © Marisol Escobar / Licensed ment, in “its recent action in Memphis,” ignored the views of “Jews, free- by VAGA, New York thinkers, Buddhists, Moslems” and “non-Christians of all persuasions.”

40 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 FAMILY Black Fox, 1992 The Funeral, 1996 Pastel Oil and crayon on wood 54¾ × 43¼ inches 56 × 122¼ × 11 inches (139.1 × 109.9 cm) (142.2 × 310.5 × 27.9 cm) Collection of the artist Collection of the artist © Marisol Escobar / Licensed © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York by VAGA, New York

Zimmermann’s vitriol came the Holy Family — a Christmas be a natural extension of the would be anything but an evan- in response to an article in that crèche. Th e museum’s director museum’s existing collection gelical gesture. same morning’s Commercial Appeal had tapped an avant-garde New of Christian-themed art. He #3 reporting that the Memphis York artist named Marisol Esco- also understood that authoriz- efore his Brooks Brooks Museum of Art (then bar to sculpt Mary, Joseph, the ing what (with matching funds) directorship, McKnight known as the Brooks Memorial baby Jesus, and “as many atten- would be a then-unprecedented had headed the Mem- Art Gallery) had won a then- dant fi gures and animals as there $18,000 commission would bring phis Academy of Art enormous $10,000 grant from will be funds for.” attention to the Brooks, and help B(now the Memphis College of the National Endowment for the But Robert J. McKnight, the enhance the museum’s national Art), but his talents went far Arts, a grant which would enable Brooks director at the time and reputation as a quality regional beyond administration. He was the museum to commission a new the man behind the commission, institution. a true polymath; earlier in his sculpture for its permanent col- knew quite well that Waldo Zim- But Bob McKnight also knew career, McKnight had sculpted lection. Entitled Th e Manger Scene, mermann would have nothing more than most people in 1960s large Western friezes, designed this new work when completed to worry about as regards this Memphis about the work of military airstrips, contracted for would become the Brooks Mu- particular “traditional” piece. Marisol Escobar. He tapped NASA, and reportedly invented seum’s fi rst-ever commissioned Himself a Yale-trained archi- her for the commission because 42 diff erent kinds of riding lawn- work of art. tectural sculptor, McKnight the enigmatic Marisol was a far mowers as well as a variety of 3D Th e Manger Scene was expected knew that, on one level, the ad- cry from a traditional sculptor. glasses. While at Yale, he dated to be a traditional fi guration of dition of this new crèche would He knew that her Manger Scene a young Katherine Hepburn

42 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 and reportedly gave the actress sonal concerns. A commission inspired him to select one of the lic success. Quickly becoming money to attend her fi rst New executed by Marisol — a strik- country’s foremost contempo- an integral part of their circle, York audition. His connections ing and irreverent fi gure in New rary female artists for the Brooks Marisol studied under Hans in the national art scene ran York art circles — would invari- Museum’s crèche. Hoff man, the so-called “Dean deep, and his heart was in the ably attract national attention to Born in 1930 in Paris to affl uent of Abstract Expressionism” (and world of art, whatever particular the Brooks. But McKnight was Venezuelan parents, Maria Sol a famously disgruntled painter aspect of which he happened to also a personal collector of man- Escobar was widely traveled. She whom, Marisol once said, was the be involved at the moment. As ger scenes; his own mother had spent a privileged and peripatet- only teacher from whom she ever he once told a reporter: “If we sculpted crèches from soapstone. ic youth in New York, Caracas, learned anything). Hoff man in- live together we have to have Th e director’s views on female Paris, and Los Angeles. She be- troduced her to the crowd of im- some kind of visual understand- artists were less than enlight- gan her career as a wood carver, portant artists who hung out at ing. Otherwise life may become ened (a 1960s Commercial Appeal though her formal training was the Cedar Street Tavern, Willem almost unbearable.” article titled “Here’s One Field in in painting and drawing. Marisol de Kooning and Jackson Pollock McKnight’s choice of Marisol Which Men Are Still Supreme” found herself in New York City in among them. As her biographer Escobar (who by the late Sixties quotes him as saying that “wom- the early 1950s, a time of artistic says, “She knew everybody.” was known to one and all by her en can’t or won’t spend the time ferment in Greenwich Village, These acquaintances led to first name only) to sculpt the it takes” to become great at art), when a whole new school of Marisol’s inclusion in several Brooks crèche was motivated but McKnight’s long familial as- now-famous painters and sculp- important group exhibitions by both professional and per- sociation with crèches perhaps tors was enjoying its fi rst pub- and eventually to a 1957 solo

JUNE 2014 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • 43 Close-up portrait of artist Marisol Escobar as she poses with her tools and some of her carved wooded sculptures. New York, New York, 1958 Photograph by Walter Sanders/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Queen, 1957 Wood and terracotta 29¾ × 13½ × 9 inches (75.6 × 34.3 × 22.9 cm) Collection: Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, gift from the estate of Roy R. Neuberger, © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York

Tea for Three, 1960 Wood, acrylic, and found objects 64 × 22 × 27 inches (162.6 × 55.9 × 68.6 cm) Collection of the artist © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York, Photograph Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery

show, held at the Leo Castelli good deal of attention from this pieces that would make use of buildings as hats), or as a subtler Gallery in New York. Chronicled fi rst exhibition but, put off by found objects. To create Tea for comment on collective bodies. in a LIFE magazine article titled her own growing fame, Marisol Th ree, Marisol masked the three But the piece feels too hollow to “Latin Beauty’s Host of Stern moved to Rome for a year to fi nd, found hat forms with clown faces be a totem and too mutable to People, Staring Pets,” this show as she told an interviewer, “a bet- and arranged them in a line atop be a hard critique. It seems more featured a collection of rough- ter way of life — a more relaxed the tall block. Th e block, which suited to a carnival than a pro- hewn wooden figures. Her and happier one.” serves as the characters’ collec- test. Even as it makes fun of the sculpture Cat looks so austere When Marisol returned from tive body, is painted red, blue, viewer, Tea for Th ree seems aware and lifeless that it is almost to- Rome, her work became larger, and yellow — the colors of the of its own toy-like absurdity. temic. Other sculptures from the more colorful, and more confron- Venezuelan fl ag. Extending from Marisol was not the only prom- show — a simple mother-father- tational, though it is debatable its center are two hands, one of inent artist of the 1960s making child tableau called Th e Ameri- as to whether it ever “relaxed.” which appears to off er the viewer art out of found objects. Robert can Family and an unembellished Tea for Th ree (p. 45), composed in a cup of tea. Rauschenberg had recently be- terra-cotta bust entitled Queen 1960, was pieced together from Th ere are several ways to read gun making his highly political (p. 45) — are similarly chilly, de- painted wooden blocks and sev- Tea for Th ree: as a toy or totem, as and sardonic “Combines” from spite the human warmth of the eral hat forms that she found a deft political and social satire found objects and collaged docu- traditional materials that Mari- while visiting a friend on Long (the three clown heads wear ments, while Jasper Johns was sol chose to use. She received a Island. It is her first of many modernist-looking miniature busy presenting reproduced

44 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 American fl ags as fi ne art. Th e fame, well-known for her sculp- critic Douglas Dreishpoon called ture and notorious for her antics these artworks “a restorative en- in the New York art world. Th ere deavor … a postwar, urban phe- were few female artists of the nomenon that elevated the fall- period who could match Mari- out from a materialistic culture sol in reputation or success. She to a new level of poetry.” Marisol was also an aloof and intriguing told an interviewer in 1965 that presence — often guessed at, but her making assemblage work rarely understood. “started as a kind of rebellion. #3 Everything was so serious. I was rooks Director very sad myself and the people I McKnight assembled met were so depressing. I started the formidable funds doing something funny so that I for the commission with would become happier — and it Benthusiasm. He corresponded worked.” with Marisol frequently con- She was then in her mid-30s cerning her progress. In 1968, and at the height of her artistic when he fi rst visited Marisol’s

JUNE 2014 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • 45 Green Fish, 1970 Paris Review, 1967 Wood, varnish, plastic, Silkscreen, 26 × 32½ inches (66 × 82.6 cm) and plaster Gift of Page, Arbitrio and Resen, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, © Marisol Escobar / Licensed 18½ × 37 × 7½ inches by VAGA, New York; © The Museum of Modern (47 × 94 × 19.1 cm) Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, New York, Collection of the artist Photograph Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York VAGA, New York

cluttered New York studio, the Considering Marisol’s avant- Family depicts the infant Jesus if it could have been pulled from petite artist — dwarfed by her garde style, there was little lying in a plexiglass, neon-laced Hollywood Boulevard signage. larger-than-life, wooden sculp- chance that her fi nished com- manger. His features are blockish Local reaction to the unveil- tures — wore uniform black mission for the Brooks would and generalized, but the child’s ing of The Family was mixed, and had her long, black hair tied be a religious cry-to-arms, but anatomically correct wooden especially at the beginning. Th e back in a tight bun. According McKnight was sensitive to bad body is highly polished. Mary, Commercial Appeal reported that to McKnight’s daughter, Peggy, press. He wrote a chastising let- who wears a bright blue brocade, “New York art authorities” ap- who also made the trip, the artist ter to The Commercial Appeal to appears to fl oat several feet be- proved of the piece, and that minced few words, but showed inform the paper that Marisol hind her son. Her face, breasts, the Brooks as an institution them her nearly completed baby would be titling her piece Th e feet, and hands are almost natu- had superseded its “provincial” Jesus. (Marisol is shown cradling Family (not Th e Manger Scene, as it ralistically cast, in contrast to reputation. Another Commer- that particular sculpture in the was described at the time of the the bejeweled, blue block that cial Appeal article, by art critic 1969 photograph that graces commission), and asked that the forms the rest of her fi gure. Th e Guy Northrop, was consider- this month’s cover.) She also “record be set straight.” It was. center of the block opens to re- ably more cautionary. Northrop spoke about her strict Catholic Despite Zimmermann’s letter, no veal a mirrored cabinet in the alerted readers that “Marisol’s upbringing and allowed them a legal action was ever taken in the area where her womb would be. Th e Family is a work to be contem- look at another of her projects: matter. Th e Family (see page 41) de- Joseph, beside her, is also built plated and meditated upon, no multiple casts of a man’s hands, buted at a Brooks opening in Oc- from a block-form. Only his pray- matter how much it hurts you to face, and genitals. Says Peggy tober 1969, alongside paintings ing hands and face are sculpted look into it yourself. And that’s McKnight, “She had this very by Carroll Cloar and a collection with detail. Both Mary and Jo- what it forces you to do.” quirky, irreverent sense of hu- of Picasso ceramics. Admission seph wear neon halos: Joseph’s Marisol’s attention to the baby mor about things that back then to the exhibition was 50 cents. is a minimal ring, while Mary’s Jesus’ anatomy (she spares no de- people took very seriously.” Th e completed crèche of Th e halo is a large orb that looks as tail) proved to be the most con-

46 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 troversial aspect of the sculpture. without noting some uninten- Museum of Art. Opening June sunny afternoon in March, and WMC-TV reported that Th e Fam- tional poetic overtones: As the 14th, “Marisol: Sculptures and the museum is hosting its an- ily is “a fascinating and awesome Brooks grew into a larger and Works on Paper” will comprise nual Spring Break Chalk Festi- work of art which many people more diversifi ed institution and the most comprehensive exhibit val. Th e white crescent of pave- are finding difficult to accept the American art world shifted, of the artist’s oeuvre ever to be ment in front of the museum as a reverent, religious expres- Marisol and her well-known displayed anywhere. is so swarmed with children, sion,” but went on to admit that commission lost prominence. Th is comprehensive Marisol parents, and their chalking the sculpture is “far greater than Th e Family has spent most of its retrospective owes its existence that nothing remains of the en- the sum of its parts.” four-plus decades in Memphis in to Marina Pacini, the museum’s trance’s usual neoclassical aus- Th ese concerns soon melted storage. If Waldo Zimmermann chief curator, whose passion for terity. Pacini seems charmed. A away; it was, after all, the late were still writing letters of dis- the artist’s work and determina- willowy woman with black hair 1960s, even in Memphis. In the sent today, Marisol’s once-con- tion to produce this exhibition streaked by grey, she turns to years since it came to town, Th e troversial work would not even has driven what turned out to me and explains conspiratorily: Family has been shown only occa- be a blip on his radar screen. be a ten-year project, an exhibi- “I’m spying.” sionally at the Brooks, mostly be- #3 tion that will no doubt culminate Pacini wears dark-rimmed cause of its size — the sculpture his spring, THE FAMILY Marisol’s career and has come glasses and earrings made from easily dominates a room — but is finally coming out recently to defi ne Pacini’s as well. tea strainers. She wears them also because its neon and plexi- of the closet. Forty- When I fi rst meet Pacini in practically, much in the same glass components are too delicate six years after she de- her Brooks offi ce, she gestures way that an ephemeral collec- to be left on permanent display. Tlivered the museum’s fi rst-ever me immediately towards a col- tion of tiny plastic snowglobes is A 1983 internal museum report commission, Marisol is once league’s upper-story window, arranged practically in her offi ce noted “scratches on Mary’s Halo.” again the biggest news at what from which we can peer down — occupying a few shelves next It is diffi cult to read this report is now the Memphis Brooks on the Brooks’ entrance. It is a to art catalogues, academic pub-

JUNE 2014 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • 47 lications, and a solid yard of her 1980s, a period when the artist’s dulity was based on both how way with every subsequent visit.” own Marisol-related research. work had fallen far out of curato- famous Marisol once was (“Th e Marisol’s silence during the The same Marisol sculpture rial fashion. Pacini was drawn to Latin Garbo”) in her heyday and interview — punctuated by (Mi Mama Y Yo) that graces the this particular piece for reasons how private she became there- monosyllabic answers — was not museum’s exterior banner also that she is still at some loss to after, both characteristics that personal. As Bob McKnight and provides the cover for Marina’s explain, though she credits her seem incompatible with a listing his daughter Peggy had observed most recent publication: a hard- love for folk art and preference in the White Pages. decades earlier, she was beyond cover, oversized catalogue for for “art that is about something” In 2005, Marisol invited Pa- being reserved. Marisol was, in the upcoming exhibition, pub- (read: art that has a clear subject cini to visit the artist’s crowd- fact, somewhat famous for her lished by Yale University Press. other than pure formal concerns, ed TriBeCa studio. When she silences. Th e critic Grace Gluck She is the principal author, along as Marisol’s socially-engaged showed up for the interview, once credited her with having with four other specialists. It is a pieces always do). Th e Venezu- Marisol did not answer the door. a “whispery voice, toneless as a formidable and beautiful book. elan artist’s work also had per- Pacini waited. Marisol did fi nally sleepwalker’s” in the same para- Pacini did not come to Mari- sonal relevance for Pacini, who arrive, back from an errand, but graph as she hailed her as a key sol and her work by way of the was herself born in neighboring the subsequent interview proved fi gure in “this new American era Brooks, though the fi rst time the Colombia but grew up in New considerably more challenging of artist-as-star.” two women actually met face- York. Both Latin-A merican than making initial contact. “I Th ere are anecdotes, no doubt to-face, in 2005, it was because women emerged feet-fi rst into had done an awful lot of oral his- apocryphal, about Marisol sitting Pacini — then a young curator an art world that had still only tory interviews when I worked so still at an outdoor dinner party with a specialization in modern recently opened to women. for the [Smithsonian] Archives that a spider built a cobweb in sculpture — was working on an When I ask Pacini how she of American Art,” Pacini says. “I her armpit. She once showed up article about Th e Family. Pacini fi rst got in touch with Marisol, had worked with a lot of diff erent at the critic Dore Ashton’s house had become interested in Mari- she laughs: “I wrote her a letter,” personalities. She was, without unannounced and unexplained, sol as a graduate student at the adding incredulously, “she’s in a doubt, one of the toughest in- and proceeded to say nothing for University of Delaware in the the phonebook.” Pacini’s incre- terviews ever, and remained that more than an hour. Her public

48 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 Lick the Tire of My Bicycle, 1974 Colored pencil and crayon 72 × 105 inches (183.1 × 267 cm) Collection of the artist © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York

Untitled #6 (complete suite of six prints included), 1978 Lithograph, 52 x 38 inches (6 prints) Collection of Arkansas State University © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York

friendship with Andy Warhol did She has been in exhibitions that make the work to make the work Family: ‘HELP!’” Other, less ex- nothing to lessen her reputation variously proclaimed her as (a) ... and I want to get it out there.’ ” plicitly titled works such as Mi of being, as she once described a Latin-American artist; (b) a #3 Mama Y Yo and Doll House are herself, a “cute and spooky” enig- feminist social commentator; y the late 1960s, also family portraits. Of the 33 ma. Most of her peers were con- (c) an “assemblage-ist”; (d) a pop Marisol was an inter- works included in the Brooks vinced her silences were genuine artist; and (d) a folk artist. She national art star. If her Marisol retrospective, at least rather than aff ected, but they emerges, in retrospect, as a sol- early artistic success nine depict families. certainly worked against her. dier in no particular camp who, Bhad a single cause célèbre, it was the Marisol’s families sometimes As a result, today she is more nonetheless, has been defi ned family. Th e Family in the Brooks are regarded as clinical social often remembered as a weird by every camp. Her work draws Museum’s collection is but one surveys or as the artist’s round- Warholian celebrity instead of from many genres, but she is not of many families that Marisol house criticisms of a displaced as a signifi cant artist of the age. there to savor the moment; she constructed during that period, and shallow suburban sensibility. Marisol is certainly a sculptor is not there to congratulate or including two other sculptures Th e artist herself never married and painter of considerable re- criticize. Her sculptures merely and a drawing that bear the or had children, and was hardly nown, although she is not easily hold up a mirror. same name, as well as Th e Kennedy a middle-American fi gure in the categorized. In mid-twentieth- When I ask Pacini about this, Family and Family Portrait. New York art scene. A closer look century New York, back when about how Marisol’s work shirks Her most famous iteration of at her family works, however, re- fi ne art was all about movements classification, she replies this a domestic scene — a 1963 ren- veals the presence of more per- (Abstract Expressionism! Post- way: “[Marisol] was asked ‘Do dition of The Family that bears sonal infl uences. Dada! Assemblage! Pop! Op!), you think of yourself as a pop the same title as the Brooks Marisol’s childhood was Marisol clearly did not fi t cleanly artist?’ and her answer was basi- commission — was used to il- marked by tragedy. Th e artist’s into any one circle. cally, ‘Call me pop, call me op, I lustrate the cover of the De- mother committed suicide when She once told an interviewer, don’t care — as long as I get into cember 28, 1970, issue of TIME Marisol was just 11, after which “I don’t like the idea of all those the show.’ magazine (see p. 98), alongside time Marisol stopped speaking groups. An artist is an artist.” “I think for her it was about ‘I the prosaic headline: “The U.S. for a year; Pacini attributes Mari-

JUNE 2014 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • 49 Bishop Desmond Tutu, 1988 Wood, stain, and ﬂ uorescent light 75 × 79 × 50 inches (190.5 × 200.7 × 127 cm) Collection of the artist, © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York

sol’s later silences to this early a strange, monumental note to masks. Th e mother and daugh- blazer for women artists. Th is is trauma. Th e artist spent the rest the artist’s oeuvre. It is silent ter are a spectre of femininity, as an amazing model of a very suc- of her youth studying and living and stiff like a monument but, alien as the women in previous cessful woman artist who was in Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, and in keeping with all of Marisol’s works such as Th e Party (1965-66) making works on her own terms New York, far away from any- work, genre-bending: the steel or Women Sitting on a Mirror (1965). in a very sexist environment and thing resembling a traditional faces of mother and daughter In interviews over the years, managing to be quite successful home. Marisol’s artistic families almost wink at you, as if to ques- Marisol has always evaded us- at it.” are often faceless and contorted, tion their own monumentality; ing the term “feminist” to classify Marisol had a mixed relation- and are always forward facing: this large piece occupies some 20 her work, but she has undeniably ship with how her work was alienated from each other, block- square feet. (Marisol has always created radical artworks about viewed and interpreted, and she ish and inhuman. been fond of public art. In 1974, the lives of women. Critic Cindy often purposefully shrank from As Pacini writes in the exhibi- she created a 12-foot-tall statue of Nemser picked up on Marisol’s the New York spotlight. She did tion catalogue: “In her art Marisol the famous Venezuelan physician use of masks and facial casts as a not show work in New York be- worked through the trauma to Jose Gregorio Hernandez for a device to deliver her social com- tween 1967 and 1973, time during her damaged family, and at least hospital in Caracas. Perhaps her mentary: “[Marisol’s] message [is]: which she lived and traveled in in her sculptures created repeat- most famous monumental work We must go on playing various Asia and the South Seas. Marisol edly intact, if sometimes threat- is the bronze statue of Father Da- roles until we can play no more.” once refl ected that she periodi- ened or threatening, families.” mian erected in 1969 that stands Pacini agrees that Marisol’s cally abandoned the art world as One of the most developed at the entrance to the Hawaii work is feminist. “I think what an act of self-abnegation: “It was and best-known of Marisol’s State Capitol in Honolulu.) happened,” Marina says, “was a feeling,” she told an interviewer, families is the 1968 Mi Mama Y Mi Mama Y Yo is also a starkly that she wanted people to judge “that I had to reject something Yo (see p. 51). Th is portrait of me- feminist work. Th e female fi g- for themselves ... I can’t look at in order to be a strong person, tallic mother and daughter adds ures are lifeless; their faces are her and not think of her as a trail- even to be myself; I was so used

50 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 Mi Mama y Yo, 1968 Steel and aluminum 73 × 56 × 56 inches (185.4 × 142.2 × 142.2 cm) Collection of the artist © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York, Photograph Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery

to the idea that I would become nothing if I didn’t.” Th e focus of her work in the 1970s shifted from social com- mentary to interior experience. Returning to New York in 1973, Marisol debuted a collection of smaller wooden sculptures, including many self-portraits of the artist anthropomorphized as ﬁ sh. Green Fish (see p. 46) is a cast of Marisol’s face coupled with a ﬁ nely wrought wooden body. It is soft and weird and oblique, a version of earlier self-portraits submerged in meditative gloss. Marisol intended these works to be very “pure and simple,” but her intent was critically taken to be a folk naivete. Despite her training, Marisol was often mis- taken as a folk artist because she used traditional materials

JUNE 2014 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • 51 52 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 Magritte IV, 1998 I Did My Future, 1974 Wood, oil paint, plaster, Pencil, colored pencil, and crayon charcoal, and cloth 72 × 83 inches (182.9 × 211.1 cm) 70 × 41 × 36 inches Collection of the artist, © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York (177.8 × 104.1 × 91.4 cm) Collection of Guy and Nora Barron © Marisol Escobar / Licensed by VAGA, New York Portrait of Marisol, 1981 Photograph © Jack Mitchell, American (b. 1925)

and drew inspiration from folk most spiritual lightness. istic, but their subjects feel real #3 styles. “Calling me a folk artist,” In drawings like I Did My Future rather than iconic. ssembling and she once quipped, “is like calling and in her many sculptures, Her portrait of René Magritte, shipping a large Picasso an African artist.” Marisol often used as raw mate- the Belgian surrealist (see p. 52), sculpture exhibition Marisol’s 1970s work was dis- rial her own face and body. She is similarly straightforward, but is markedly more dif- missed as quirky and fun, but did so pointedly at times, but also deceptively so. Marisol knew fiA cult than assembling an exhi- critically unimportant. It did not as a matter of convenience; she that to honor Magritte, a great bition of paintings or works on sell well. Pacini believes this was often said that no one was around influence, she would have to paper. Shipping crates need to a timing issue, insisting that “[the to model during her late work master that very Magritte-ian be specifically made and spe- fi sh] are mesmerizing ... the sur- hours. A New York Times critic artistic paradox: how the very cifi cally priced; work is sensitive faces of the wood are absolutely wrote in 1973 that narcissism complex can be found within the and exceptionally breakable, and extraordinary.” was “the dark side of her inspi- very simple. often very heavy. Cost specifi cs At this point, she also focused, ration.” Th is observed darkness Perhaps the most enigmatic are often hard to pinpoint until mid-career, on works on paper. perhaps stems from the steeliness of these is her 1988 sculpture of very late in the process, and as Using simple materials (pen- with which she executed her own Bishop Desmond Tutu (see p. 50). a result funding can be hard to cil, colored pencil, crayon), she portraits — her self-portraiture Like Th e Family, her Bishop Des- fi nd or unstable. Pacini explains drew feathered fi gures, fl oating is entirely without sympathy. mond Tutu uses light to high ef- the process of assembling a show in a colorful, futurist ether. Th e Th roughout her work, she is in- fect. Tutu’s body is made from like this one as a constant nego- most haunting of this series is accessible, a mask of herself. a blood-red, 75-inch by 79-inch tiation, a sort of Rube Goldberg the beautiful 1974 work I Did My Marisol’s most accessible block of wood. The piece is machine of moving and unpre- Future (above), in which a woman- works came late in her career, dominant without sacrifi cing any dictable parts; if you are lucky, ev- ish fi gure is penetrated by many from the 1980s and beyond, and frailty; it’s both magisterial and erything comes together at once. forms that look like mixes be- they are mostly portraits in wood magical. It’s one of Marina Pa- Sculpture retrospectives are tween hands and double-barrel of her friends and role models: cini’s favorites. “I tell everybody notoriously diffi cult to put to- shotguns. Th is drawing, for all Andy Warhol, Willem de Koon- that you haven’t experienced that gether, even for large museums the heaviness of its post-Pop sub- ing, Rene Magritte, Picasso, Bish- sculpture until you have seen it in with big curatorial teams. For the ject matter, has a Kandinsky-like op Desmond Tutu, and others. the fl esh [with] the light fl owing continued on page 98 approach to color. It has an al- Th ese works are far from natural- out,” she says.

JUNE 2014 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • 53

The South’s leader in TIME magazine (December 28, 1970), one of six Estate Jewelry and Diamond Solitaires TIME covers that feature Marisol’s work. is very deserving and I am really proud of Located in Historic 1.866.VANATKINS it — dealing with sculpture is complicated.” Marisol herself, now in her mid-eighties Downtown New Albany, MS vanatkins.com and still living in New York, has oﬀ ered con- sistent support for the Brooks exhibition from its beginning. Th ough her declining health no longer permits her to be actively engaged with the retrospective, her relationship with Pacini is clear in how the exhibition has been catalogued and curated. Marisol has allowed Pacini to access previously unseen parts of the artist’s personal archive, ensuring that the Brooks show is not only the most complete showing ever, but also the most personal exhibition of Marisol’s work. The exhibition itself has been installed chronologically (early career to late career) with the 1968 Brooks commission of Th e Family as an entry point. Th e audio tour and literature Victorian Village Lot on is in both Spanish and English. After its display Adams Avenue $97,000 at the Brooks, “Marisol: Sculptures and Works

98 • MEMPHISMAGAZINE.COM • JUNE 2014 on Paper” will travel the country; perhaps the most notable stop will be at El Museo del Bar- rio, in New York City. Half a century after Bob McKnight’s inspired idea of commissioning a Christmas crèche for Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis is fi nally getting a real payback. Wolfchase Galleria Memphians can at last go beyond Th e Family and see something close to the totality of Rolling On The River, Memphis Marisol’s extraordinary work with a full appreciation for its context and legacy. In- somuch as this exhibition will refl ect that legacy, it will also create it. Marisol, the quiet and mysterious fi gure whose work has always eluded defi nition and frustrated crit- ics, arrives in a new and perhaps defi nitive limelight. It is left to us to understand. As Marina Pacini says, “She wanted people to think for themselves.”

Original Oil, 18” x 27” by Robert Finale- Available Embellished Canvas image sizes: 12” x 18”, 18” x 27”, 24” x 36” 2ULJLQDO2LOV+DQG(PEHOOLVKHG&DQYDV*LFOHHV$FFHQW3ULQWV © Robert Finale 2013 © Robert Finale 2013 © EPE, Thomas Kinkade Company 2007 Blues On Beale Street Sunset Over Memphis Graceland 50th Anniversary by Robert Finale by Robert Finale by Thomas Kinkade

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Marisol and Andy Warhol at the Feigen and Herbert Gallery, New York City, 1963. photograph © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Venice Tile & Marble Showroom Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Adelaide de Menil, courtesy of Acquavella Galleries. 3665 S. Perkins, Suite 1 Memphis, TN 38118 Marisol: Sculpture and Works on Paper opens at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art on June 17th, and will be on display at Ten- nessee’s oldest art museum until September 10, 2014. National sponsors include the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the National Endowment for the 901.547.9770 • venice-tile.com Facebook.com/Venice-Tile-Marble Humanities. Raymond James is corporate spon- Monday-Friday 8am-5pm sor of the exhibition. For further information, call Saturday 8am-12pm 901.544.6200 or visit brooksmuseum.org.

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