Page 48 - Studio International - May 1970

Robert For about seven years the Los Angeles-based idealized type which Graham still uses.
sculptor Robert Graham has been making The most recent plexiglass-encased situations
Graham's miniature environments. The environments, retain the vocabulary of those previous works,
but the treatment of the contained space has
comprised of human figures and objects,
followed a student background in Northern become less associative and the female figures,
boxes California figurative painting and a period of now uncanny, flawless replicas of humans, are
combining biomorphic funk-type objects with employed in non-evocative routine activities.
wood boxes. He put tanned California beach The figures remain the only demanding focal
Helene Winer youths engaged in frolicking sex play in points within the space, though they are
idyllic landscapes within glass-fronted wood greatly neutralized in terms of the viewer's
boxes. As Graham expanded the area of the subjective involvement with their particular
environments to a scale relationship to the activity. The dead-pan nudes of this series are
figures and objects, he covered the pieces joined with other reduced, simplified objects
with clear plastic domes and since 1967 has and effects within and on the plexiglass con-
contained his environments in plexiglass tainer. This overall reduction substantially
boxes. The scenes became increasingly surreal controls the polarity that existed in earlier
and the eroticism less adolescent and more pieces between the anecdotal treatment of
sensual. A variety of articles were used to the figure and the formal considerations of the
define the space—soft wall-hangings, piles of work as a whole. Each box is a carefully con-
AN EXHIBITION OF ROBERT GRAHAM'S dirt, rocks, fungus clinging at edges, sheets of trolled mock-up environment : alien, silent,
SCULPTURE WILL BE HELD AT THE fabric, wire, string, bound bundles, and unpolluted and without distraction.
WHITECHAPEL ART GALLERY FROM MAY 27 wood platforms. The female figures lost their The individual figures are not personal inter-
TO JUNE 28 robust appearance and evolved into the almost pretations or representations of 'woman' but
are strict scale models of living females selected
by the artist. They are as faithful to the original
as the best of model trains and ships. Graham
models each figure in wax, detail-by-detail,
from photographs of a standing girl taken from
many views. The reference photographs are
scaled to the size of the intended figure—
about an inch to a foot. He makes a rubber
mould and casts the desired number of figures
in beeswax coloured with natural dye,
affixes the hair and exactingly paints on the
remaining details. The wax figure is suffi-
ciently pliable and anatomically correct to
allow manipulation into any reasonable
human configuration without further treat-
ment to the basic form. Graham's technical
and structural perfection allows him to make
continuously varying use of the figure.
The box, while functioning as a protection
and as the traditional frame for the situation,
is itself an integral part of the work. In the
recent series of works the plexiglass is left
essentially transparent with occasional small
areas treated to effect the light entering the
interior and to alter the definition of the
enclosure. Sometimes the surface is sprayed
lightly with white paint to diffuse the light, or
patched with plaster to create opaque 'walls'
and more definite interior shadowed areas. In
each box the floor is covered in rough-
textured, light-absorbent, white felt that
functions as an effective matte ground for the
reflective plexiglass and the smooth little
bodies. The box is extended several inches
below the 'floor' to form an empty base area.
The base had often before been treated as a
sub-terrestrial region, whose interior contents
of water, condensation, rocks, sand, sticks,
ropes, etc. were visible from outside the box
and through the transparent inside floor.
The boxes of the present group of works, two
feet square and about one foot high, encase
two to four unclothed, identical females in
stop-action positions of the same activity—