"Portrait of de Kooning,"
1980. Mixed media.
PURCHASE, N.Y. - From June 17 through September 2 the Neuberger
Museum of Art will present "Marisol," the first comprehensive
overview of Marisol Escobar's work from the 1960s through the
1990s. others, fleetingly. The exhibition reveals the wit, subtle
humor and social satire inherent in Marisol's work.
In the 1950s, Marisol developed a technique for combining
painting, drawing, stenciling, casting and carving with
ready-made objects. Her enigmatic assemblages combine an
appealing mixture of illusion and reality, crudeness and
sophistication. Although Marisol is associated with the 1960s Pop
movement, her style reveals strong elements of assemblage
techniques that originated in Cubist fragmentation and collage.
Her frontal views and chunky perspectives evoke the sculpture of
ancient Egypt, a genre also devoted to portraiture and scenes
reflective of its times.
Marisol's wide range of themes and subjects frequently elude
categorization. However, the vantage of time permits a view of
her oeuvre that defines more clearly the varying elements that
bond it together.
A fully illustrated color monograph that accompanies the
exhibition includes an essay written by noted art critic Eleanor
Heartney. "What endures in Marisol's work is the universality of
the impulses she captures. Truly a sculptor of modern life, she
evokes the venality of social climbers, the integrity of great
artists, the contradictions of the powerful and the quiet dignity
of the dispossessed. She feels both their absurdity and their
pain and encourages us to do the same," Heartney observes.
Marisol was born in Paris in 1930 to Venezuelan parents. Her
early years were caught up in European travel with her family
then commuting between Caracas and the United States. When she
was 11, Marisol was sent to boarding school following the death
of her mother. Subsequently, in the early fifties, she declared
her interest in art and announced her wish to study in Paris. Her
father supported her art interests but felt that she would be
safer in New York.
Ironically, New York was then the center of a radical bohemian
culture that Marisol embraced eagerly. She studied at the Art
Students League, the New School of Social Research and Hans
Hofmann's painting school. As she associated and integrated with
local artists, she absorbed and adopted their prevailing
aesthetic and her work changed and expanded.
In 1961, Marisol was included in the Museum of Modern Art's
groundbreaking exhibition "The Art of Assemblage." Her amusing
sculpture portrayal of tourists entitled "From France," was
included alongside works of Twentieth Century pioneers such as
Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Louise Nevelson, Robert
Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
Marisol evolved into a major figure in contemporary art. In 1963,
Life magazine commissioned a work for an upcoming movie
issue. The result, "John Wayne," is a satirical take on the
super-macho image that the actor embodied. The artist's lifelong
inclination has been to poke fun at the prosperous while
conveying sympathy for the less fortunate.
"She is an artist capable of creating both a wonderful parody of
the macho ideal represented by John Wayne and a reverent homage
to South African Bishop Desmond Tutu," notes Eleanor Heartney.
"She has made deeply personal works like `Mi Mama Y yo,' a
poignant portrait of herself as a little girl with her mother.
She has also produced witty, caustic representations of world
leaders like Franco, De Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson
and sensitive depictions (represented in the exhibition) of
artists Picasso, de Kooning and Georgia O'Keeffe in the later
years of their lives."
Marisol is also the Neuberger Museum of Art 2001 Biennial
Exhibition of Public Art Honoree, on view throughout the Purchase
College campus through October 27. She is represented in the show
by her 1997 bronze sculpture "The General."
The Neuberger Museum of Art is on the campus of Purchase
College, State University of New York, Westchester County. Museum
hours are 10 am to 4 pm Tuesday through Friday, 11 am to 5 pm
Saturday and Sunday; 914-251-6100.
