Page 49 - Studio International - June 1972

Ivor Abrahams's

sculptures

R. J. Rees

Off to the left, beyond the parking space there
was a sunken garden with a fountain at each of
the four corners. The entrance was barred by
a wrought-iron gate with a flying Cupid in the
middle. There were busts on light pillars and a
stone seat with crouching griffins at each end.
There was an oblong pool with stone
water-lilies in it and a big stone bull-frog
sitting on one of the leaves. Still farther a rose
colonnade led to a thing like an altar, hedged in
at both sides, yet not so completely but that the
sun lay in an arabesque along the steps of the
altar. And far over to the left there was a wild
garden, not very large, with a sundial in the
corner near an angle of wall that was built to
look like a ruin. And there were flowers. There
were a million flowers.
Raymond Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely

The work of Ivor Abrahams is thematically that are readily recognized, and original they are squalid and profane.
derived from two sources : the public art of invention is expended only in enrichment and .Epitaph (1962-64) is a box modelled casually
commemoration and, more recently, the elaboration of ornament to satisfy the on the form of a sarcophagus. The box is made
vernacular art of suburban gardening. The requirements of display'. The commemorative of slabs in reinforced plaster. The cast of a leg
derivation is explicit and at times literal. aesthetic is therefore prescriptive and rule- appropriated from a statuary fragment is
In 1962 Abrahams began a series of sculptures governed : 'We find in these works a placed on the lid of the box; the lid is faintly
which drew extensively on the iconography of standardized repertoire of gesture and nuance'. inscribed. Attached to the side is a pleated
commemorative art. The representative forms Abrahams's early sculptures are faithful to drape or conventionalized acanthus leaf cast in
of commemorative art are manifest, he noted, this aesthetic. The normative features of the latex and painted red cadmium light. Epitaph
in a variety of objects : war memorials, commemorative object are assimilated and is constructed in a cursory, seemingly indifferent
triumphal columns and arches, inscribed stone absorbed. The work is almost synonymous with manner. The symbolic permanence of the piece
and metal slabs, mausoleums, and honorary its source. Upon examination, however, certain is subverted by its obvious frangibility. The
statues. The function of these objects is to discrepancies emerge. A necessary condition placement of the leg is banal; the appended
perpetuate the memory of a person, an event, of `monumentalism' is that its objects are hybrid is gratuitous. The sculpture is very
or an idea: the memorial object is a 'message durable, substantial, and ostensibly
to posterity'. For Abrahams the paradigm of imperishable. The commemorative sculptures
commemorative art is the monument. This is of Abrahams are, in contradistinction,
classified into three types : funerary, honorary, extremely makeshift and provisional. They were
and historical-celebrative. Especially evocative usually cast in rough plaster and look like a
for him were the monumental sculptures of the rush job. In the original monuments narrative
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In detail and allegorical embellishment are
these monuments a pseudo-classical style is indispensable: in Abrahams's sculpture these
employed and the two ideals of realism and characteristics are often glossed over, usually
allegory are fused to contrive an aesthetic of disregarded. The composition of the individual
profound bathos and sentimentality. sculptures appears to be adventitious, almost
In his approach to this stuff Abrahams was disinterested, and contingently casual. The
eclectic and indiscriminate: the appropriation solemnity and grandeur of the commemorative
was intuitive rather than erudite and the archetype is undermined in these sculptures :
sculpture is broad and schematic. It's important
to note that the work is in no sense an illustration
or parody; his intention was neither satirical
nor surrealist. Abrahams viewed the objects of
commemorative art essentially as a collection
of signs. Their significance was, for him, in the
nature of their symbolically-accessible public
intelligibility. Writing in 1966, he noted: 'Since
the purpose of commemorative art would be
defeated if the public did not quickly grasp its
significance, the motifs used in decoration tend
to be traditional. The symbols must be those Upon a Painted Ocean 1965-66. 5o X 52 X 42 in. Mixed media

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