Review
FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING
Organized by the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery
Runs until March 5
Triangle Gallery
"Now people don’t have to travel to Paris," quips the Triangle’s director, Jacek Malec, while showing off the gallery’s most recent exhibition, Figuratively Speaking.
Although this selection of art from the collection of the University of Lethbridge may not prevent anyone from stepping onto a jet plane for a tour of the City of Light, it is a respectable grouping of figurative works from some noted European, American and Canadian artists.
Yet, unexpectedly, it is the North Americans who steal the show here. Yes, pieces from Matisse, Derain and Henry Moore command attention, but it is the excellent figurative works from the U.S. and Canada that stand out, starting with two photographs from American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
Born into a middle-class family, Mapplethorpe originally considered photography merely a tool that he could use to ponder whatever objects interested him at the moment. And eventually what interested him the most were homoerotic content and classical imagery of the human body. During the early 1980s, Mapplethorpe was at the centre of a media frenzy as conservative critics condemned his most explicit photographs while those more sympathetic to the artist’s work called him a genius.
Mapplethorpe, who died in 1989, has left behind a considerable collection of photographs that continue to stake out his place in the history of art. In Untitled #1 and Untitled #2, he presents one of his favourite models – a nude, muscular black man – placed in front of red and gold backgrounds, respectively. The effect, borrowed from his early days as an art student at Pratt, removes anything extraneous from the viewer’s field of vision in order to focus attention on the subject. While Mapplethorpe was alive, it was his controversial subject matter that received the most focus, yet his photographs remain a powerful and often moving proof of his vision.
Located nearby is another standout work, a silkscreen by one of Mapplethorpe’s childhood heroes, Andy Warhol. This print of Richard Nixon (entitled Vote McGovern) was produced by Warhol in 1972 to be sold in support of the Democratic Party’s efforts to defeat Nixon in the U.S. presidential campaign of the same year. Of course, Nixon went on to win in a landslide, but Warhol’s silkscreens of the green-tinted president remain in collections across the world, reminding Americans everywhere to consider who they voted for during a turning point in their history.
Also not to be overlooked in this exhibition of figurative works are pieces from Canadian artists Alex Colville, H.G. Glyde, Angela Grossmann and Calgary’s Alexandra Haeseker. |
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