ww 12 DICK POLICH THE CONDUCTOR: DICK POLICH IN ART HISTORY BY DANIEL BELASCO > Louise Bourgeois’ 25 x 35 x 17 foot bronze Fountain at Polich Art Works, in collaboration with Bob Spring and Modern Art Foundry, 1999, Courtesy Dick Polich © Louise Bourgeois Estate / Licensed by VAGA, New York (cat. 40) ww TRANSFORMING METAL INTO ART 13 THE CONDUCTOR: DICK POLICH IN ART HISTORY 14 DICK POLICH Art foundry owner and metallurgist Dick Polich is one of those rare skeleton keys that unlocks the doors of modern and contemporary art. Since opening his first art foundry in the late 1960s, Polich has worked closely with the most significant artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His foundries—Tallix (1970–2006), Polich of Polich’s energy and invention, Art Works (1995–2006), and Polich dedication to craft, and Tallix (2006–present)—have produced entrepreneurial acumen on the renowned artworks like Jeff Koons’ work of artists. As an art fabricator, gleaming stainless steel Rabbit (1986) and Polich remains behind the scenes, Louise Bourgeois’ imposing 30-foot tall his work subsumed into the careers spider Maman (2003), to name just two. of the artists. In recent years, They have also produced major public however, postmodernist artistic monuments, like the Korean War practices have discredited the myth Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC of the artist as solitary creator, and (1995), and the Leonardo da Vinci horse the public is increasingly curious in Milan (1999). His current business, to know how elaborately crafted Polich Tallix, is one of the largest and works of art are made.2 The best-regarded art foundries in the following essay, which corresponds world, a leader in the integration to the exhibition, interweaves a of technological and metallurgical history of Polich’s foundry know-how with the highest quality leadership with analysis of craftsmanship. Over the years Polich landmark artworks he has made. has cast and fabricated thousands of One of the keys to Polich’s success sculptures for hundreds of artists. is his enthusiasm for delving into (An artist list can be found on page the ambiguous territory between 96.) He has also employed hundreds art and craft while clearly of artisans who take great pride in their distinguishing the different work, some of whom have been artists professional roles of artist and in their own right or later established fabricator. “As an engineer working their own foundries in the Hudson with materials and structures, faced Valley and beyond.1 As one of the with a problem, I transform it into principal art fabricators of the past something I can tackle objectively, half-century, Polich warrants a using the rules and laws of substantive history that tells his story engineering. Artists, however, from the vantage point of art history. work from within themselves; Dick Polich: Transforming their response to a problem is Metal into Art is the first museum subjective, based on feelings and exhibition to explore the impact personal views, uninhibited by precedent,” Polich wrote.3 At his very best, Polich will lead an artist to new discoveries and manifest TRANSFORMING METAL INTO ART 15 those discoveries in a form that meets or exceeds the artist’s vision. The fertile exchanges between Polich and a diverse group of artists reveal how the development of Polich and his foundries are an inextricable part of the evolution in economics, Polich moved to Rahway, of contemporary art. NJ. There he lived in company housing and met Merton Flemings, the mentor who would change his life. A recent Beginnings Ph.D. in metallurgy with a specialty in advanced foundry technology, Flemings Dick Polich is a self-made man. He arrived at American Brake Shoe around was born in 1932 to a working class the same time as Polich. The two became Croatian family that immigrated to fast friends, dining nearly every night the Chicago area two decades until Flemings joined the faculty of earlier. He grew up in a tight-knit the Massachusetts Institute of community in Lyons, on the West Technology in 1956.6 Side, and played football in the Polich soon tired of the routine at rough and tumble Suburban work, and craved excitement and travel. League.4 Thanks to his athletic Influenced by his Yale classmate Russell prowess and scholastic W. Meyer, Jr., who joined the Marine achievement, Polich received a Corps Reserve, Polich joined the Navy scholarship to attend Yale to fly jets in 1956 (fig. 1). He served for University. He first rode a train on three years, the experience of landing his journey from Chicago to New fighters on aircraft carriers having Haven. At Yale, Polich excelled in satisfied his thirst for manly adventure. athletics and academics. His interest Next, Polich decided to pursue his in the intersection of art and longtime ambition to be an architect. He industry originated during these reconnected with Scully, who recalled undergraduate days. Polich studied Polich’s term paper on Art Nouveau, an the history of architecture and architectural and decorative style that modern art with the renowned allied craft and industry in the late 19th art historians Vincent Scully and and early 20th centuries. Scully wrote a George Hamilton,5 and in the strong recommendation letter, and the summers he worked for the Harvard Graduate School of Design American Brake Shoe Company. admitted Polich. He moved to This industrial foundry awarded Cambridge with his wife and two sons him a scholarship for his senior in 1960, but he did not thrive in the year, which covered tuition and competitive atmosphere of architecture guaranteed him a job after school. Polich describes being unable to graduation in 1954. With a degree defend his work, a skill essential to survive the faculty critiques that were, and remain, a staple of art and design education. Disheartened, Polich left Harvard after a year, and in 1961 went 16 DICK POLICH < fig. 1 The Times (Lyons, IL), December 19, 1956, Courtesy Dick Polich practices in American foundries.7 Most artists cast work in Europe, Taylor said at the time, because the labor-intensive traditional techniques discouraged the opening of new art foundries in America. MIT secured grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations to develop new methods of inexpensive, high quality art casting. Updating the ancient lost wax process, Duca invented the “foam vaporization” method. A sculpture carved in polystyrene would be encased in a sand mold. Technicians poured molten metal into the mold, which evaporated the foam and left in its place a unique solid casting. After perfecting this method, which involved testing to work for Flemings on the research different types of venting, MIT cast team in the MIT Foundry. There, Polich over 30 works, including Duca’s felt more comfortable using his skills to bronze Pegasus in 1959 (fig. 2) and manufacture technically and materially ductile iron Crucified Man in 1960 advanced objects without having to (fig. 3).8 The textured surface of provide a conceptual framework or Pegasus reveals its material origin aesthetic justification. That, he in plastic, not plaster, wax, or clay, understood, was the responsibility demonstrating that the result of of the artist. its unorthodox production is Like many industries in equivalent to that of traditional post-World War Two America, foundries techniques. experienced a period of rapid growth The MIT Foundry was an and technological transformation. New ideal setting for Polich, who was materials and techniques that had been spiritually awed by the primitive developed in the 1930s and 40s gained power of molten metal heated to practical application on a large scale to over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and feed the growing consumer and military intellectually stimulated by the markets. The MIT Foundry, a university technical challenges of casting for leader in advanced foundry practices at art and industry. After working on the time, may have been the only one in the foundry staff for a year, Polich America to combine high-end industrial began to take graduate courses, research and serious commitment to researching precision casting of artistic experimentation. A unique aluminum and magnesium, a collaboration between two metallurgy problematic metal that easily professors, Merton Flemings and burns. Though he worked with Howard F. Taylor, and artist-in-residence Duca, Polich focused on aerospace Alfred M. Duca, led to new low-cost, industry, and wrote a thesis on artistic applications of industrial developing high strength ball bearings to withstand continual usage in the navigational gyroscopes of nuclear missiles TRANSFORMING METAL INTO ART 17 on 24-hour alert. In 1964, Polich earned a master’s degree in metallurgy and returned to industry, getting a job at the high-tech Hitchiner Manufacturing Company in Milton, NH. He soon outgrew this position and sought a larger challenge. Polich became a division manager at the aerospace < fig. 2 Alfred M. Duca, manufacturer Bendix Corporation Pegasus, 1959, bronze, 42 x 36 x in New Jersey. Living in Ridgewood, 36 in., Collection of NJ, Polich could have settled into a deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, life of suburban affluence and Lincoln, MA, Gift of Veronique Bernard corporate ladder climbing. in memory of Alfred However, it was the 1960s, and Duca, 2001.55 Polich, like so many others, vibrated < fig. 3 to the heady optimism of the day. Unknown Photographer, His consciousness raised, Polich Alfred M. Duca with Crucifixion in foam, began to consider ways to redirect c. 1960, gelatin silver the power of technology from print, Courtesy MIT Museum, corporate and military ends to more Cambridge, MA humanistic goals. He had recently met artist Toni Putnam, and became interested in the creative life as a valuable endeavor. As Polich tells the story, after receiving an order to produce 50,000 parts for gas masks, he realized he was finished with Bendix and ready to leap into the unknown.