A Closer Look at … Marble.Pdf

The Elements within Sculpture 4 June – 15 July 2011 A closer look at… Marble Like the use of bronze and wood, marble is an example of a traditional material used by sculptors. The marble used by Peter Schipperheyn has its origins in the Renaissance, with Michelangelo’s David being carved from marble sourced from same quarry in Italy. Likewise, the material used by Danila Vassilieff and Clive Murray-White is sourced from quarries in Australia. The artists who use marble in The Elements within Sculpture have all sourced their material from widely different locations, giving each work a very different aesthetic feel. Russian born Danila Vassilieff was well known for his paintings, however in 1949 he decided to use Lilydale ‘marble’ for sculpture, frustrated by his inability to sell his paintings.1 The artist also built himself a house nicknamed ‘Stonygrad’ in Warrandyte, a tongue in cheek reference to his birth country and his new found sculptural medium.2 Vassilieff’s material is popularly referred to as ‘Lilydale marble’, however the Mitchell quarry is a limestone quarry so there is contention as to whether it is marble or limestone. Vassilieff had migrated in Australia in the 1930s and became an integral part of the Melbourne artistic scene, forming a close bond with the angry penguins and the artists out at Heide. The provenance of Dancing Figure, c.1950 is likely to be from the collection of Sweeney Reed, the adopted son of Heide’s founders and patrons John and Sunday Reed. In Dancing Figure, c.1950, Danila Vassilieff used Lilydale ‘marble’, which he sourced himself from the Mitchell Quarries in the Lilydale area in Victoria, quarries founded in 1878 by Dame Nellie Melba’s father. In an interview with artist and biographer James Gleeson, Elizabeth Vassilieff, Danila’s wife and pupil, describes the ‘marble’, as “remarkable for its variety of colour and graining… the limestone beds at Lilydale [are] millions of years old, fossil remains of corals and shellfish and titled up to their present position under tremendous pressure” 3 . Lilydale ‘marble’ was not widely used by sculptors and Vassilieff is said to carved the ‘marble’ direct without pre-drawings, first beginning with hand carving before upgrading to electric tools.4 In her monograph on Vassilieff, published in 1982, curator Felicity St John Moore, attributes the artist’s Russian cultural heritage and love of folk art to the series of dancing figures he produced in 1950.5 Dancing Figure, c.1950, is similar to Tango, 1950 and Musician, 1950, both Lilydale ‘marble’ carvings produced at the same time. The twist of the bodies in all three DANILA VASSILIEFF 1897-1958 works suggests movement, with the texture of the ‘marble’s’ Dancing Figure c.1950 composition, giving the sculptures life. In Dancing Figure, c.1950, Lilydale ‘Marble’ the dancer looks ready to leap up from the ground and is 29 X 18 X 10 cm 1 Interview with James Gleeson, 8 & 15 November 1975, National Gallery of Australia 1975 g. 4 2 Felicity St. John Moore, Vassilieff and his art, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, pg. 53 3 Interview with James Gleeson, 8 & 15 November 1975, National Gallery of Australia 1975 pg.2 4 Felicity St Jonh Moore, Vassilieff and his art, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, pg. 78 5 Felicity St Jonh Moore, Vassilieff and his art, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, pg. 92 described by sculpture curator Ken Scarlett as, “probably the most astonishing work in the exhibition”6. Clive Murray-White’s SD, 2009 is made of marble sourced from Chillagoe quarry, 200kms northwest of Cairns. Murray-White evokes the classical tradition of marble sculpture, SD, 2009, part of a series of marble busts, creating marble heads that could be part of collection of ancient Greek or Roman sculpture. The Chillagoe marble’s red hues stand out on the face, revealing remnants of a coral reef and marine fossils embedded in the marble. Murray-White has purposefully chosen to keep the process of making the sculpture out of marble obvious, “the stone must remain as stone and the marks lefts by the carving must have their say”.7 Peter Schipperheyn’s practice is also steeping in Classical Italian tradition and material. After completing his initial studies at the Caulfield Institution of Technology, he studied Rome’s Academia di Belle Arti, for nine months in 1975, returning to Italy on a scholarship to study at Academia di Belle Arti, Carrara. It is this time in Carrara that deeply influenced Schipperheyn’s sculpture, training in the Carrara marble that was popular with Renaissance sculptors, most famously, Michaelangelo’s David is carved from Carrara marble. Schipperheyn’s inclusion in The Elements within Sculpture, My Wife, 1980, stands in the garden entrance to the gallery, peacefully greeting visitors, eyes shut in contemplation. At first glance the work seems calm, however on closer inspection, the viewer spots a pair of hands, eerily gripping the feet of the sculpture. Phillip Adams, a collector of the artist’s work writes that Schipperheyn “extends the Classical tradition into modes of expression that speak to our modern world, on the one hand, consciousness of tradition, on the other, freshness and inventiveness”8. Although not sculpted from marble, William Eichholtz draws on the imagery of Classical marble sculpture in his works Impossible Cornucopia, 2007 and Huysman’s Cornucopia, 2007. They invoke the similar classical sculptures, however Eichholtz’s work is actually made PETER SCHIPPERHEYN 1955- of polymer cement on polystyrene core with coloured glaze. Both My Wife, 1980 works are tinged with green hues, with oranges and purples Carrara marble highlighting the fruit and vegetation of the cornucopias, the green 178 x 33 x 44 cm glowing in a way that betrays its modern material. 6 Ken Scarlett, Introduction, The Elements within Sculpture, exh. cat. Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, 4 June – 16 July 2011 7 Murray- White, Clive, With permission from the stone, exh. cat. Charles Nodrum Gallery, 7 June – 30 June 2007 8 Philip Adams, Foreword, in James D. Wingate, Peter Schipperhern: The Genesis of a Sculptor, Port Melbourne: Bay Street Publishing, 1988 pg 7 Eicholtz sculpted Huysman’s Cornucopia, 2007 with a live model posing in from of him whilst he worked from life. It references Joris-Karl Huysmans’ “decidedly anti-Naturalistic book, ‘Against Nature’”9, the artist quoting Oscar Wilde, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, who describes it as “the strangest book he had ever read...There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour”10. The title of both works references classical antiquities, the cornucopia being a prevalent theme in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, the motifs popular with the classical marble sculpture Eicholtz references. Impossible Cornucopia, 2007, is described by Professor Jeanette Hoorn from the University of Melbourne, as “an Adonis astride a high Baroque pedestal…like a European statue from another cultural time”11. The figure is elevated well above the viewer, which forces them to lift their head to look up to the Adonis, feeling inferior due to the scale of 3 metre work. According to Prof. Hoorn, “this sculpture parades its classical heritage as an illusion while employing unique techniques and new materials to render an impossible cornucopia”.12 WILLIAM EICHOLTZ 1962 - WILLIAM EICHOLTZ 1962 - Impossible Cornucopia, 2007 Huysman's Cornucopia, 2007 polymer cement on polystyrene core, polymer cement on polystyrene synthetic glaze edition unique core, synthetic glaze edition 8/10 350 x 140 x 110 cm 90 x 50 x 55 cm 9 The artist 10 The artist 11 Prof. Jeanette Hoorn, The University of Melbourne 12 Prof. Jeanette Hoorn, The University of Melbourne .

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