"Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor," at the Akron Art Museum

Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor, installation view, Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries,
Courtesy of the Akron Art Museum

Abstract Expressionism was a movement of painters, and Adolph Gottlieb was not the least of them. But I hadn't known that Gottlieb had also turned to sculpture late in his career (during the '60s and '70s) until I saw the handsome show that runs until February 17 at the Akron Art Museum. Organized by the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, it presents Gottlieb's small sculptures, showing his cardboard maquettes through wooden templates to the finished steel objects composed of flat, painted shapes. The completed pieces are collections of circles, arrows, rectangles, arcs, and "bursts." The simple shapes are those one imagines a child would cut from construction paper. These shapes are well known from his paintings of the same period, but they give the sculptures a special air, suggestive of—but not the same as—the whimsicality of Calder and the brightness of Matisse cut-outs. They feel different from his paintings, in which shapes assume a weight of significance that seems lacking in the steel versions.

Abstract Expressionism notably thought big, and indeed the Gottlieb paintings that accompany these sculptures are reasonably large (Red or Blue, 1972, is 90 x 108 inches; Three Elements, 1964, is 96 x 48 inches). Although Gottlieb produced work for placement in landscape, the bulk of his sculpture was table-top sized. Presented here is work as large as Petaloid's 32.5 x 31.5 x 15 inches, the depth being on account of the base. (Petaloid, 1968 is featured in the foreground, above.) A lovely, chunky and otherwise articulate Untitled (not pictured), which lines up three shapes cut from wood and painted brown, is a mere 8.25 x 9.75 x 3.75 inches. Hardly heroic.

Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor, installation view, Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries, 
Courtesy of the Akron Art Museum. NB, this is reverse view of image above:
Petaloid, 1968 is seen left, from opposite side. Foreground is Untitled, 1968,
which appears from opposite end in picture above, in the background, right.

In my review of David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy at the Wexner Center in spring 2012, I noted what had gone without remark, that the celebration of his cubes skipped over the fact that a good deal of his work explores planes rather than three-dimensional shapes. Gottlieb was apparently a friend of Smith's and an admirer: Gottlieb was certainly investigating some spatial questions that intrigued Smith as well, though Smith's flat works are, I think, more challenging. They tend to lead our eyes into negative spaces that continue his positive marks. Gottlieb's sculptures are more truncated in gesture, and I found their beauties to be more centered—more aggregated in the close relationship of positive shapes. Most of the shapes are slotted into flat rectangular bases that not only secure the upright forms, but serve as horizon lines or as definition of a world in which the visual event is collected. The base is, in fact, like a different, more open kind of organizing picture plane.

But of course sculpture's not a painting. The delight of this sheet metal sculpture is that its appearance, content, and significance are protean, shifting with every move the viewer makes. The flat shapes can disappear and reappear like characters in a drama: The eye loses them whenever one's position reduces them to line.

Adolph Gottlieb was born in 1903 and died in 1974. He began his studies at the Art Students' League in New York in 1919; 1968 was the year his retrospective filled both the Whitney and Guggenheim Museums. It was during the preparations for this career retrospective, when he was sixty-five, that he undertook sculpture, gleefully, for the first time, creating the work now seen in Akron.

Gottlieb and Mark Rothko, as part of a 1943 joint statement, said,"We favor simple expression of complex thought...We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." Both men were "post-painterly" abstract expressionists, whose work was more distant and cool than theatrical. Gottlieb nevertheless considered his work, balanced and cerebral as it was, to be expressive: "I try, through colors, forms, and lines, to express intimate emotions." This thought applied to the sculptures no less than to his painting.

Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor, installation view, Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries, Courtesy of the Akron Art Museum. Foreground, Arabesque, 1968,painted steel,
 26.75 x 38 x 12.25;" Painting, Red vs. Blue, 1972, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 108.

The generous documentation that the Gottlieb Foundation and Akron Art Museum provided as background suggest that the body of work in this show, "challenged the distinction between painting and sculpture," pointing to Gottlieb's continued use of long-perfected painting tools, such as touch, visual balance, and surface quality.

The photographs provided (individual photography was not permitted in this show) highlights the similarities between the design elements of Gottlieb's paintings and sculptures. In the view of Arabesque posed before Red vs. Blue, similarities are quite obvious in mirrored shapes, calligraphic strokes, and simplification of form and color. 

In both the sculpture and the painting, there is a tension between a sense of rest and the possibility of eminent take-off or propulsion—yet they feel very different nonetheless. Gottlieb may "challenge the distinction" between the two forms, but I think this photograph demonstrates that the challenge leaves the distinction standing firmly in place. I further think that it contravenes the notion that the sculptures might convey "intimate emotions" or "reveal truth" in a way comparable to the paintings.

Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor, installation view, Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries, Courtesy of the Akron Art Museum.
Foreground, Two Arcs,1968, painted aluminum, 26 1/2 x 37 x 24 3/4." Painting: Three Elements, 1964, oil on linen, 96 x 48."
(Back, left, maquette for Two Arcs, cardboard with pencil notes.)

I think the big difference in what these two media offer Gottlieb lies in the nature of the way positive and negative space are defined by either. In the sculpture, Two Arcs, above, the shapes cut from steel, mounted in a stiff steel base, have crisp, clear edges. Their definition is absolute. The fact that the curves are not geometrically perfect is part of the interest of the piece, but the imperfection, like everything else, is perfectly stated. Likewise, though Gottlieb hand-painted the sculptures himself, I will offer only my word (since no close-up is available) that each painted element is uniformly coated with paint. Despite the occasional dried drip, there appears to have been no impulse to let serendipity have its day, or to attempt effects through variations in paint coverage. The simplicity is based in part on disciplined definition.

Such clear definition is important for this kind of sculpture because its components are visually very light and can disappear with a viewer's movement. The sculptural elements stand on their own, supported only by their inner relationship as seen from any particular angle. Their visual background—the room, the other artworks around it—can detract considerably if the installer is not sensitive to its positional delicacy.

Paintings composed with similar shapes and colors are altogether different because they are framed into permanent environments separated from the rest of the world by the colors and edges of their backgrounds. The backgrounds, in both of the paintings pictured above, contain smaller, colored environments against which shapes are set. So even while we are asked to understand these as "flat forms" and "flat surfaces," we instinctively know they are not. As soon as there is overlapping, we feel dimension. Moreover, on the large canvases, Gottlieb has not coated surfaces in the uniform way he covered his steel cut-outs. It's easier to see (on this scale, especially) in Three Elements than in Red vs. Blue, but layered paint on canvas allows (or begs) for shadows of past color applications and gestures to show through. The definition of the space inhabited by the shapes is largely given: There are four edges they relate to.

In Three Elements, Gottlieb uses edges crisp, fuzzy, and ragged for a variety of purposes: to impart definition to shapes; to invoke dissimilar emotional and intellectual responses in us. This powerful tool—the use of edge—isn't possible, working in sheet-metal. For reasons like this in the nature of materials, the sculptures don't have enough complex or nuanced elements to satisfy like Gottlieb's paintings do.

I'm sorry that I can't include any photographs of the maquettes for the sculptures, however, for these little painted cardboard trials in fact come very close to being comparable to the paintings in emotional effect. Several of these are pictured in the show's catalogue, Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor, published by the Gottlieb Foundation (ISBN 978-0-9642065-2-6). The maquettes are, to my mind, more eloquent than the finished sculptures because they are so evidently simple, expressive of complex thought and intimate emotions. The cutting of cardboard with scissors doesn't produce exact products. Gottlieb wasn't exact or even decisive in painting them, so we see that painting history the final products lack. Cardboard isn't very strong, so some of the maquettes slump or list in a way that allows the emotion to show in the materials themselves. There is a wish—an aspiration—there is nuance in each maquette that the purity of the final, inflexible steel can't imitate. Those qualities of nuance, breathing room, or open potential exist inside of paint on canvas but around the steel cut-out sculpture. The maquettes, existing in a material world between the two, seem to participate in more of the soft virtues of painting.

I found Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor to be a delight, especially because of the way the show allows the visitor access to the artist's process, presenting all the working stages of the sculptor's design process, and coordinating examples of Gottlieb's imagery in both media during the period. Good luck for Midwesterners: Akron will have the show until mid-February. After it closes there, it will open again in Ann Arbor this fall. The University of Michigan Museum of Art will have it from September 21, 2013 through January 5, 2014.

Robert Stivers: Veiled Images at the Akron Art Museum

Robert Stivers, "O"#74," 2000.
Toned gelatin silver print.

 20 x16 in.
Gift of George Stephanopoulos,

 Akron Art Museum.
Courtesy of the Akron Art Museum

There is everything to absorb, fascinate and engage the visitor to the single gallery to Robert Stivers' Veiled Image at the Akron Art Museum. This photography show remains in place until mid-January, 2013. For Ohioans or western Pennsylvanians, this is good news, for the show is a loitering, contemplative one that can only ripen with multiple viewings. It gets under your skin and makes you wonder about your memory: Did you really see what you thought you did? What is the line between the personal emotion and recollected imagery Stivers evokes in his viewer, and what actually hangs there, printed on paper behind glass, protected by guards? In this "black and white" work with its broad palette of neutrals and grays, Stivers arranges remarkably plastic imagery. It reaches the depths of the mind before the eye can even focus on the content of the framed picture. The act of focusing only describes the content as a dictionary defines a word for a translator of poetry in a foreign language.

Installation view, Robert Stivers: Veiled Image, Akron Art Museum, July 28, 2012 through January 20, 2013.
Courtesy, Akron Art Museum. 

Robert Stivers, FIC-Baby, 2000.
Toned gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 in.

Gift of Noemi and Daniel Mattis, Akron Art Museum.

Courtesy, Akron Art Museum

Veiled Image is an experience of forty individual photographs; of photographs the artist has purposefully clustered in groups; of photographs in a shadowed, story-telling room, where the story has a settled sequence, but no words. The story is what the viewer calls from personal recesses that Stivers' photographs stimulate by caress, innuendo, and fleeting pulses of electric current, all generated by his isolating composition. His subjects are human, natural, architectural, and interiors of rooms. But none of these is ever presented whole, nor is any presented entirely in focus. He distances the viewer from every shot, even (or especially) those that he brings us closest to by filling the frame. This technique is often used by photographers to make us feel that we can inspect the finest details of the pictured subject. Stivers strips away the illusion and reminds us that when we are very close, it can be impossible to focus. We respond to his work as consummate "art" photography, but in this, as in other techniques, he is in fact, realistic.

Each photograph is a highly composed tableau of great formal beauty. Each image is set like a jewel against a carefully toned background and, like the jewel, it is the only focal point within the frame. There is no competition for our attention; he gives us one event in each picture. Because of its singularity, the soft particularity of its arrangement, color, edge, and degrees of contrast each takes on great significance. When the picture is, as several are, grotesque, it can frighten us and send us scrambling for a context in which we can mute its impact. 

Robert Stivers, Head with Open Mouth, from Series 5, 1995.
Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16."

Gift of George Stephanopoulos, Akron Art Museum.

Courtesy, Akron Art Museum.

This search for context ultimately drives the whole show. It's Stivers' device for turning us in upon ourselves, because the only context that we'll find is the one we create as we follow the numbered sequence of surprising images that leads us around the room.

An image like Head with Open Mouth is a fine example of the several levels of disorientation into which Stivers can draw us. What is the context of this image coming as it does late in the series, after the many others we have seen—figurative, architectural; ambiguous in threat, sexual content, placement in time or period?

But we're disoriented within the frame as well. Who—or even, what?—is depicted? Is he or she a contortionist? Are the limbs from one person or two? Is the expression the result of torture? Of song? Only our own fears and imaginations can determine the answers, or we must find the fortitude to accept not knowing.

Stivers is a self-taught photographer, a darkroom perfectionist who prints his work on matte papers. His academic training through a master's degree was in dance, which he practiced as dancer and choreographer into the 1980's when his career was ended by injury. After a stint in the business world (he became a stockbroker and insurance agent), he found a new creative home in photography, which he has pursued since 1988. His figurative photographs often depict himself or friends from the world of dance.

Palm Trees #1, from Series 8, 2002. Gelatin silver print.


Gift of Mark Reichman, Akron Art Museum. 

Courtesy,
Akron Art Museum

Stivers' deep association with dance sensitizes me to another distinguishing aspect of all his work, with or without figures in it. While the show in general has the sense of being very still, in fact, every frame captures something in the middle of motion. At the simplest level, Stivers' love of soft-focus blurring can be interpreted as motion, as a transitional state on the way to precision. In the photo above, FIC-Baby, the cropped view isn't necessarily the end of a process: Since the image is unfocused, possibly the lens is still moving in, on the way to a visual goal we don't foresee it trying to reach.

In Palm Trees, #1, the movement of the trees is obvious: Not only the leaves, but the trunks have the stuttering appearance that time-exposure captures. We can not see the wind, but we can see its effects on the trees. Oddly, though, we don't see the effect of the wind on the clouds, which appear stationary by comparison with the twitching trees. In a brief time-exposure, this would be the case, but the effect is disconcerting. The subconscious accepts that we blend temporal units that awareness rigidly separates (e.g., duration, immediacy). In memory and in imagination, we barely make distinctions of time at all.

Wrapped Woman, One Eye, from Series 5, 1994.


Gelatin silver print. 20 x 16 in.


Gift of James Bogin, Akron Art Museum.
Courtesy, Akron Art Museum

I cannot pin down a particular cast of characters from among the faces we see in this show, but through the faces—some from sculpture or two-dimensional art, others from live models—we pass back and forth between historical periods; we are sometimes left between them, or in a zone freed of chronological placement all together. When we are left beyond clock time, we are given the power to locate the story somewhere other than Earth. Photos of women's faces illustrate this point, being figures we know and don't know, women we have seen, but whether in the flesh, in still art, cinema, or dreams it may be difficult to know. Whether we know them from Stivers' life or our own is, in itself, difficult to sort out.

Portrait of a Woman-R, from Series 5,
1997. Gelatin silver print. 20 x
16 in. Gift of James Bogin,
Akron Art Museum.

As dancers pirouette or leap across a stage, we long to be able to stop their motion, just for an instant at least, so we can linger in adoration over the powerful lines their bodies draw, and can rejoice over the exquisite blend of fantasy and sweat. If only we could hold them there, just for a moment.

Very often, good art tempts its audience with desires to come closer, to inhabit or to possess the art they see and admire. Sculpture galleries and galleries displaying material culture in museums—furnishings, pottery, glass, jewelry—are all accented with signs reminding visitors, "Do Not Touch!" because it is so tempting to do just that.

Stivers' photographs are enticing that way. We want to touch the photographs not as much as we want access to the deeply personal secrets they hold. The artist's composition and techniques create a veritable gingerbread house of temptations. We want to come so close that we can reach through his illusions, to possess the secrets, the meanings; to see through the haze, to focus through the blur, to apprehend what only by a little bit eludes us. "I am so close," he makes us feel. It's the feeling I have when I'm awakened by an alarm from an involved and desperate dream, one that I'm certain is loaded with portent; in the moment lost to the alarm, my hand would have moved through unfathomable time, into certainty, and would have illuminated what success it was that I ached for in my sleep.

Robert Stivers, Head in Mirror, 2002. Toned gelatin print,
20 x16 in. Gift of Noemi and Daniel Mattis, Akron Art Museum.
Courtesy, Akron Art Museum.

I want to put my hand through the mirror to affirm that the head is mine. Head in Mirror makes the distance clear and the foreground blurry, so it feels like reality is indeed beyond the mirror. That head is surely waiting for me; or it may very well be me.  My eyes tell me that it is a block head; that it's a mannequin, carved from wood. But something makes me want to identify the beautiful, ornamental frame as my own vision. It's the love with which I see my resting self, the care and concern I have for that beloved, bald blockhead. Does this mirror reflect my heart? Predict my desire? Or project my vision into another state of mortal life?

Grouped photographs in installation of Robert Stivers: Veiled Image at Akron Art Museum, July 28, 2012 - January 20, 2013