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Indepth Arts News:
"Elie Nadelman: Classical Folk"
2001-06-12 until 2001-08-19
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum
San Antonio, TX,
USA United States of America
Elie Nadelman: Classical Folk, the first major survey of the
artist in over two decades, opened to the public on June 12, 2001, at The
Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, where it remains on view
through August 19, 2001. Including 46
figural sculptures and 22 drawings, the exhibition highlights the work of Elie
Nadelman (1882–1946) during his years in the United States (1914–1946), a
mature phase during which he arrived at his distinct synthesis of traditional
and popular sources.
Born in Poland in 1882, Nadelman lived in various cities throughout
Europe, including ten years in Paris, until settling in the United States in 1914,
where he remained until his death in 1946. It was during his years in America
that Nadelman developed his unique style, in which he applied the aesthetic
formulae he developed in Europe to subjects drawn from American society
and popular culture. This balancing act that Nadelman performed between the
classical and the contemporary lies at the root of his art. Avis Berman, writer
and art historian, describes the hybrid nature of Nadelman’s work in the
accompanying exhibition catalogue, writing: “He dignified and
monumentalized everyday life by drawing on models from the classical past
and then energized it by encorporating motion and the primal, uninflated
forms of folklore, such as utilitarian crafts and popular theatre, for a new
visual forthrightness in sculpture.”
Although friends with many avant-garde artists of the day, including Marcel
Duchamp, Nadelman worked against the modernist narrative, remaining
dedicated to classicism, as seen in the marble bust Woman’s Head
(Goddess) (1916). However, Nadelman was able to complement the
structural principles of antiquity with his interpretation of modern life, as
evident in Man in the Open Air (1915), a work retaining the contour and
silhouette typically found in Greek sculpture but updated by the addition of a
contemporary bowler hat and bowtie.
During his years in the United States, Nadelman developed a deep
appreciation for American folk art. In 1917, he began carving regularly in
wood and applying gesso to suggest flesh and clothing, giving the work a
directness and immediacy reminiscent of American folk sculpture, as in
Orchestra Leader (c. 1919). Nadelman also paid a subtle tribute to the skills
of European craftsmen with his use of a “joined wood” technique, whereby the
figures were not carved from a solid piece of wood but, rather, assembled from segments of
wood glued together, and then carved. Nadelman often chose subjects that allowed him to capture
an expressive moment in time and demonstrate his belief in the power of form. His
appreciation of popular art and entertainment led him to concentrate on
dancers and performers as preferred subjects for his art. Dancer (High
Kicker) (c. 1918–19) and Female Dancer (c. 1920) are both enlivened
figures caught in motion, yet they maintain a grace and composure achieved
through curves and convex forms, indicative of Nadelman’s commitment to an
art of formal harmony.
During the last decade of his life Nadelman produced hundreds of plaster
figurines, presumably for broad distribution. These figurines, little known and
rarely seen, draw comparison to terra-cotta Tanagran figurines from the
Hellenistic period in Greece, with their combination of classical motifs and
everyday poses and fashions. Their doll-like, cherubic quality and
demonstrative gestures illustrate Nadelman’s refusal to rigidly separate high
from low art.
Ramljak states, “The exhibition will reveal Nadelman’s synthesis of diverse
sources––past and present, traditional and modern, high and low, classical
and folk––and his ability to endow his sculptures with an expressive life, at
once accessible and refined.”
The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts.
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