Floating Figure

Last updated

Floating Figure
Gaston lachaise floating figure.jpg
Floating Figure (model 1927), no. 5 from an edition of 7 Estate bronze casts, National Gallery of Australia
Artist Gaston Lachaise

Floating Figure is a 1927 sculpture by Gaston Lachaise. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Gaston Lachaise’s Floating Figure is a modernist allegorical statue of the artist’s muse as an enlightened, ‘floating’ nude woman. [4] It is ultimately based on a portrait statuette of the artist’s wife, Isabel Dutaud Nagle (1872–1957), made in about 1919, that was broken sometime after the spring of 1921 and reworked by Lachaise in about 1924 to create a new statuette of a schematized, fragmentary figure. [5] The damage to the initial statuette had fortuitously freed his imagination from a more literal representation of Isabel at home with a book, and enabled him to envisage a soaring, semiabstract work that explicitly conveys a universal meaning.

Lachaise created the larger-than-life plaster model of Floating Figure at his country home in Georgetown, Maine, in three weeks’ time. [6] The full-scale plaster model of Floating Figure was exhibited as Woman in Lachaise’s important show at the Brummer Gallery, New York, in early 1928, when it was described as “a seated woman who by the power of her gestures seems suspended in space,” [7] and envisioned in a garden setting. [8] Lachaise had the full-scale model cast in bronze in December 1934/January 1935, in time for inclusion, as Floating Woman, in his retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in early 1935; the show also included a bronze cast of the refashioned statuette (now owned by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California). [9] [10] The foundry that produced the first cast of Floating Figure is unknown, although it was very likely either the Gargani or the Kunst foundry, both of which Lachaise was using around that time. [11] The cast was donated in 1937 to the Museum of Modern Art, and was dramatically displayed in the museum’s garden for many years.

Casts

In addition to the Museum of Modern Art cast of Floating Figure, [12] eight bronze casts have been made. An edition of seven casts was produced between 1963 and 2005 for the Lachaise Foundation by the Modern Art Foundry in Queens, New York. The first five casts in the edition were acquired by the Society Hill Project in Philadelphia, [13] the Ray Stark Collection in Beverly Hills, California, the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in Lincoln, Nebraska, [14] the Putnam Collection of Sculpture at Princeton University in New Jersey, [15] and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. [16] An Artist’s Proof was made in 2015 for the Lachaise Foundation, also by the Modern Art Foundry, and was donated in 2019 to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edgar Degas</span> French Impressionist artist (1834–1917)

Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Epstein</span> American-British sculptor (1880–1959)

Sir Jacob Epstein was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1910.

<i>The Thinker</i> Sculpture by Auguste Rodin

The Thinker is a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin, situated atop a stone pedestal. The work depicts a nude male figure of heroic size sitting on a rock. He is seen leaning over, his right elbow placed on his left thigh, holding the weight of his chin on the back of his right hand. The pose is one of deep thought and contemplation, and the statue is often used as an image to represent philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gaston Lachaise</span> American sculptor

Gaston Lachaise was a French-born sculptor, active in America in the early 20th century. A native of Paris, he is most noted for his female nudes such as his heroic Standing Woman. Gaston Lachaise was taught the fundamentals of European sculpture while living in France. While still a student, he met and fell in love with an older American woman, Isabel Dutaud Nagle, then followed her after she returned to America. There, he became profoundly impressed by the great vitality and promise of his adopted country. Those life-altering experiences clarified his artistic vision and inspired him to define the female nude in a new and powerful manner. His drawings, typically made as ends in themselves, also exemplify his remarkably new treatment of the female body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Weber (artist)</span> Jewish-American painter

Max Weber was a Jewish-American painter and one of the first American Cubist painters who, in later life, turned to more figurative Jewish themes in his art. He is best known today for Chinese Restaurant (1915), in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, "the finest canvas of his Cubist phase," in the words of art historian Avis Berman.

<i>Bird in Space</i> Sculpture by Constantin Brâncuși

Bird in Space is a series of sculptures by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși. The original work was created in 1923 and made of marble. This sculpture is also known for containing seven marble figures and nine bronze casts. Brancusi created the piece over 14 times and in several mediums over a period of 20 years. It was sold in 2005 for $27.5 million, at the time a record price for a sculpture sold in an auction. The original title in Romanian is Pasărea în văzduh.

<i>Little Dancer of Fourteen Years</i> Sculpture by Edgar Degas

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer is a sculpture begun c. 1880 by Edgar Degas of a young student of the Paris Opera Ballet dance school, a Belgian named Marie van Goethem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry McBride (art critic)</span> American art critic (1867–1962)

Henry McBride was an American art critic known for his support of modern artists, both European and American, in the first half of the twentieth century. As a writer during the 1920s for the newspaper The New York Sun and the avant-garde magazine The Dial, McBride became one of the most influential supporters of modern art in his time. He also wrote for Creative Art (1928-1932) and Art News (1950-1959). Living to be ninety-five, McBride was born in the era of Winslow Homer and the Hudson River School and lived to see the rise of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and the New York School.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renée Sintenis</span> German artist

Renée Sintenis, née Renate Alice Sintenis, also known as Frau Emil R. Weiss, was a German sculptor, medallist, and graphic artist who worked in Berlin. She created mainly small-sized animal sculptures, female nudes, portraits, and sports statuettes. She is especially known for her Berlin Bear sculptures, which was used as the design for the Berlinale's top film award, the Golden Bear.

Elsa Fraenkel née Rothschild (1892–1975) was a German–born British sculptor raised in Heidelberg, Germany.

The Stettheimer Dollhouse is a two-story, twelve-room dollhouse, created by Carrie Walter Stettheimer (1869-1944) over the course of two decades, from 1916 to 1935. It contains miniature art made for the dollhouse by artists like Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Archipenko, George Bellows, Gaston Lachaise, and Marguerite Zorach.

<i>Standing Woman</i> Sculpture

Standing Woman is a heroic bronze statue of a confident, robust nude woman by Gaston Lachaise that was modeled in 1928-30 and first cast in bronze in 1933.

<i>Diana</i> (Saint-Gaudens) Statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Diana – also known as Diana of the Tower – is an iconic statue by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, representing the goddess Diana. Once a major artistic feature of New York City, the second version stood atop the tower of Madison Square Garden from 1893 to 1925. Since 1932, it has been in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Brummer</span> Art dealer and collector

Joseph Brummer was a Hungarian-born art dealer and collector who exhibited both antique artifacts from different cultures, early European art, and the works of modern painters and sculptors in his galleries in Paris and New York. In 1906 he and his two brothers opened their first gallery in Paris, the Brummer Gallery. At the start of World War I, they closed the gallery and moved to New York City. Joseph alone opened his next gallery in 1921 in Manhattan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern Art Foundry</span>

The Modern Art Foundry is an historic foundry in Astoria, Queens, New York, founded in 1932 by John Spring. His descendants continue to operate the business in what used to be the carriage house of the Steinway Mansion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Csaky</span> French sculptor

Joseph Csaky was a Hungarian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist, best known for his early participation in the Cubist movement as a sculptor. Csaky was one of the first sculptors in Paris to apply the principles of pictorial Cubism to his art. A pioneer of modern sculpture, Csaky is among the most important sculptors of the early 20th century. He was an active member of the Section d'Or group between 1911 and 1914, and closely associated with Crystal Cubism, Purism, De Stijl, Abstract art, and Art Deco throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

<i>Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior</i>

The Rearing Horse and Mounted Warrior or Budapest horse is a bronze sculpture attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Depicting Francis I of France on a destrier horse, it is estimated to have been cast from a clay or wax model in the first half of the 16th century. The sculpture is in the permanent exhibit of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts.

<i>Family Group</i> (Moore) Sculpture series by Henry Moore

Family Group is a sculpture by Henry Moore. It was his first large-scale bronze sculpture, and his first large bronze with multiple castings. Made for Barclay School in Stevenage, it evolved from drawings in the 1930s, through a series of models to bronze castings in 1950–51. It also one of the last important sculptures that Moore developed from preliminary drawings: in future, he worked mainly from found objects, maquettes and models.

Gerald Nordland (1927–2019) was an American museum director and art critic.

Isabel Dutaud Nagle Lachaise (1872–1957) was an American-born poet, and wife of sculptor Gaston Lachaise active in the early 20th century. Isabel Lachaise was his muse, model and the inspiration for many of his sculptures and drawings.

References

  1. ↑ Hodara, Susan (29 September 2012). "'Face and Figure: The Sculpture of Gaston Lachaise,' at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  2. ↑ "Floating figure displays Gaston Lachaise's fertile imagination". theaustralian.com.au. Archived from the original on 13 January 2018. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  3. ↑ Boström, A.; Bedford, C.; Curtis, P.; Hunt, J.D.; J. Paul Getty Museum (2008). The Fran and Ray Stark Collection of 20th-century Sculpture at the J. Paul Getty Museum. J. Paul Getty Museum. ISBN   9780892369041. Archived from the original on 28 April 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  4. ↑ Lachaise, Gaston. “A Comment on My Sculpture.” Creative Art, vol. 3, no. 2, August 1928, p. xxiii.
  5. ↑ Budny, Virginia. "Gaston Lachaise's American Venus: The Genesis and Evolution of Elevation." The American Art Journal, vols. 34–35 (2003–2004), pp. 62–143. JSTOR 351057
  6. ↑ As reported by a guest, Rebecca Salsbury Strand, in a letter of September 15, 1927, to Alfred Stieglitz: “He has made a thrilling figure …. It is a cosmic thing – he did it in three weeks – he had it in his mind for years so it came fluently from his fingers —“; Alfred Stieglitz/Georgia O'Keeffe Archive, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
  7. ↑ "Exhibitions in New York: Gaston Lachaise, Brummer Galleries.” Art News, vol. 26, no. 22, March 3, 1928, p. 11.
  8. ↑ McBride, Henry. "Lachaise Exhibition Scores: Sculptor Definitely Comes into His Own in Present Display." New York Sun (New York, N.Y.), March 3, 1928, p. 10.
  9. ↑ Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gaston Lachaise: Retrospective Exhibition. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Museum, 1935, nos. 31, 27; https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1994_300061878.pdf.
  10. ↑ The first bronze cast of the statuette lacks the nude’s proper right forearm and feet; https://collections.sbma.net/objects/12025/floating-woman?ctx=a4e52decf0921e7a7257f109cc6d6dfdea3a1a4d&idx=3. Subsequent casts of the statuette, all made after Lachaise’s death, also lack the proper left arm. An early example of those later casts is owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; https://dia.org/collection/floating-woman-51616.
  11. ↑ On foundries used by Lachaise: Day, Julia, Jens Stenger, Katherine Eremin, Narayan Khandekar, and Virginia Budny. "Gaston Lachaise's Bronze Sculptures in the Fogg Museum." Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, vol. 49, no. 1, Spring-Summer 2010, pp. 1–26. JSTOR 41320430
  12. ↑ "Gaston Lachaise. Floating Figure. 1927 (cast 1935)". MoMA. Archived from the original on 8 April 2016. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  13. ↑ "Floating Figure (1927, cast 1963)". Association for Public Art.
  14. ↑ Janovy, K.O.; Siedell, D.A. (2005). Sculpture from the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery. University of Nebraska. ISBN   9780803276291. Archived from the original on 28 April 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  15. ↑ "Floating Figure | Princeton University Art Museum". artmuseum.princeton.edu. Archived from the original on 28 April 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  16. ↑ "International Paintings and Sculpture | Floating figure". nga.gov.au. Archived from the original on 13 September 2015. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
  17. ↑ https://www.mam.paris.fr/fr/collections-en-ligne#/artwork/gaston-lachaise-floating-woman-180000000238520?page=1&filters=authors%3ALACHAISE%20Gaston%E2%86%B9LACHAISE%20Gaston,,checkbox%3Awithimage%3AAvec%20image.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.