Page 49 - Studio International - May 1970

the figures are, in fact, the same person. A figure lies on her front with one elbow bent in `live' human; however, there is nothing
different model is generally used for each box; the air, hand flat on the floor. The figures of about the scale or treatment of the environ-
in earlier work the figures were less particu- this box complete their action more specifi- ment that indicates the particular size.
larized and the same model might be differ- cally than do some of the others. This box A concurrent series of works without figures is
ently treated within the same box to represent contains only the single balsa post located in many ways the more coherent in terms of
another girl. In general the girls seem not so about equidistant from the feet of the figures, unified space, although only in the knowledge
lusty or as formerly standardized in their style a small black rectangular patch on the top of the scale set by the figures in the inhabited
of attractiveness. In one new work surface, a thin metal tube attached to the pieces. The very coherency of the figureless
Graham has replaced the earlier sexy nymph interior of one wall and opaque plaster on the works serves to clarify the duality of the role
with a rather slump-shouldered, slightly upper half of the opposite wall. Another four- played by the figure. The more intrinsic role
protruding-stomached type, even more figured box shows a more tightly grouped and of the figure was somewhat camouflaged in
astoundingly life-like than her idealized complex variation. The figures are on a two- Graham's past work by the intense subjective
counterparts. In her progress from a prone to stepped platform walking along the top step, demands of the sexual narrative. His new
a standing position, one of the images is stepping down to the lower step, moving pieces enable the figure to dominate the
involved in an awkward pushing effort with in the opposite direction to the first figure, environment, set the scale, assume more varied
only hands, bony knees and toes touching the to the last position which is seated on the and formally complex attitudes than any other
floor, while the other is standing in S-curved bottom step. Behind the grouping on the object could possibly do without becoming a
posture, knock-kneed, pigeon-toed and platform is one completely white wall which confused, contrived device—and also work
skinny-legged. A balsa floor-to-ceiling post is acts as a backdrop for the compact scene and, with the other sculptural components to unify
the only other object in the interior, and a unlike other pieces, dictates a viewing the space.
thin brown painted line from the point where approach.
the post meets the top continues across and It is important that the works be understood
down one side. In another piece, showing a in terms of full human scale : this is not a case
two-part standing-to-sitting action, Graham
uses a Negro girl, exactingly particularized in
colour and features.
Graham uses photographs to obtain those
precarious or unrelaxed positions of an
action which demand that the flow of the
movement be conceived by the viewer. As in
one piece, a girl is shown in a realistically
clumsy action of lifting and turning a 'heavy'
balsa box on to its side. The beginning and end
of the effort is missing, so that one figure has
the box balanced on one corner and the other
figure has made a half-circle turn with the box
and just lowered it successfully onto its side.
The use of the figures in the new works is
immediately reminiscent of Muybridge's
studies of nudes. But the works are more
appropriately associated with the photo-
graphic experiments of Marey and Eakins, or
the Futurists' concern with simultaneity: of Gulliver coming upon the Lilliputians. The
Graham has offered a complex set of con- particular size to which Graham confines his
siderations to their definition of trajectory sculptures is one that is most conducive to life-
path and sequential attitudes of a given action. size interpretation and this is realized when
For Graham's figures not only do what Marey's the boxes are looked into rather than at. At
do; they also relate formally to themselves in very close range, adopting the figure's eye-
three-dimensional space, as well as to the level or from above, the interference of the
planes and objects of their environment. edges and other distractions are eliminated.
This notion of relating spatially to one's own The size is the familiar one of mass-media view-
past movements, and of physically occupying ing. Although Graham's images are the size of
not only the volume of space of any single those in television or magazine photographs
moment but the additive volume of the com- this doesn't necessarily soften the shock of
pleted act, is apparent in Graham's work in seeing 'real' nudes so tiny. It is the size that is
the boxes containing four figures. In one of small, not the scale, and the choice of the size
these pieces the figures are in various positions is only important in as much as it is operative.
of rolling diagonally across the floor. Each Interestingly, when the figures are seen in
figure is adjusted in every detail to the posi- close-up black-and-white photographs a
tion in which she is frozen : one figure is flat confusion or disorientation occurs, because of
on her back, arms bent over her head; the the loss of size verification. While the figures
next is on her side rolling onto her front, feet are almost impossibly life-like in colour,
in air, arms outstretched on the floor for posture, form and detail, they are also only
balance; the following figure is further from 5½ inches tall and sealed in an air-tight con-
the previous two than they are from each tainer. Certain refinements inherent in reduc-
other and is rolling on to her back controlling ing the figure to one-twelfth normal size
her equilibrium in another state; the fourth prevents the photograph from representing a