Page 62 - Studio International - February 1965

statements of the social realists. Motorcycles. running
figures and sinister highways seem a commentary of
sorts. and even allegory appears in such a painting as
Blue Wall Crowd with its oblique remarks on modern
factory life. But it is never focused decisively Birmelin
at times adopts the crude technique of the mass media
magazines or the movie marquee posters. using lurid
yellows and greens. shiny with a turpentine gloss. At
the same time. he informs us that this is not due to his
limitation as a painter but to a conscious choice. The
reasons for this arbitrary approach to a picture remain
obscure. When Birmelin clarifies his intentions. he
stands a good chance of being a significant painter.
The season has been rich in sculpture exhibitions. one
of the finest being Reuben Nakian's at the Egan Gallery.
Nakian is our grand old man of modern sculpture,
having been born in 1897. and having run through the
history of modern American sculpture with a vigorous
attitude of independence. Thomas Hess has called him
'one of those omniscient Armenian-Americans who. at
one time or another. has seen everything.·
What Nakian sees. whether in his art. historical
imagination or in the flesh. he does not forget. His
exhibition, which is dominated by two monumental
abstractions on specific themes. includes at least a
dozen examples of themes and modes that he has
pursued relentlessly for years. Myth-haunted, Nakian
never forgets the sexual combats on which the history
of civilization is at least partly based. Many of his small
terra-cottas are light-handed accounts of classical rapes
(he loves the Leda motif) and rapprochements that
never stray far from the immediate truth of sensuality.
These include terra-cotta plaques on which Nakian
swiftly incises his summary illustrations. and groups
in the round, in which baroque impulse is given free
rein so that an emphatic thumb mark and a neatly­
sliced plane work together to produce a modern version
of Titian, and at times. even Bernini.
The two monumental sculptures are Ma/a-an
allusion to Goya-and the Birth of Venus. Both are
composed of plaster-soaked burlap on steel pipes. and­
are ultimately intended to be cast in bronze.
Ma/a is an airy construction of horizontally ranged
curved shapes-wing-like or drape-like-that spread
out into space, but also confine it in their curved
interiors. Light and shadow is dispersed as though the
sculpture were a painting, but this is used paradoxically.
for the pipe armature decisively establishes a ground
plan and a projection. The controlled effusion of forms
is admirable. Even in this reference to the maja, Nakian
alludes to his classical obsessions-a hint of scales and
Armando Morales The influence of the movies is to be reckoned with in wings, harpies and sirens. that transforms this abstract
Black Mtfror. 1964 much contemporary painting. It is confusedly apparent sculpture into a stimulating compendium of allusions.
33 24 ,n The Birth of Venus is an enormous undertaking.
Galer,a Bonino Gallery in the work of Robert Birmelin at the Stable Gallery.
Birmelin, like Francis Bacon with whom he has certain spreading on a horizontal axis like a landscape. The
affinities. makes extensive use of the cut-off frame and chilly white-greys of the plaster reinforce the sense of
the blurred montage effects of the film. Unlike the desolate landscape; make the site a long-forgotten.
older painter. Birmelin seems overwhelmed with a salt-aged cradle of great drama. By covering the steel
number of things he wants to say. In certain paintings, pipes at the base so that they form box-like shapes.
Birmelin makes a chaotic mixture of perspectives. Nakian gives a platform of rock out of which the
slicing figures in half. making one half large the other apparition rises. an ambigaoas flaring of drapery-and
small; cutting into a room in which objects are limbs. worn out by time but vital in memory.
meticulously rendered in the Flemish manner with The elaborate scheme of this sculpture. with its
broad references to other more wild climates; juxtapos­ frontal effect. is best grasped when the sculpture is
ing the classical movie closeup with the long shot. and viewed from the side. Here. within. a great canyon of
generally mixing his metaphors with insoucianG:e. broad forms. with large. assured curves leading from
There are overtones of surrealism in his work, but one plane to the next. fr0m one degree of shadow to
there are also disconcerting overtones of the flatfooted another. gives a sense of the cavernous troves of
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