There was a time when a “bronze” meant a sculpture, and a sculpture was something that examined a recognizable form, usually of a human figure. This tradition held for thousands of years, until Rodin and Picasso showed the world around the turn of the century that a sculpture needn’t be a well-rounded, discernible human figure, but could be instead an investigation of space by an assembly of planes. The concept began to expand in the 1950s when virtually anything three dimensional, even what looked like a pile of garbage, was called sculpture. In some circles, by the end of the 1960s, just the verbal description of a three-dimensional concept became accepted as sculpture.
All the while, bronze figures in the original sense were still being produced by some artists. These were attempts to preserve figural sculpture by using the most refined, high-academic styles inherited from the nineteenth century. Most of these efforts failed as nothing more than slick, shallow imitations of the salon style. But other artists, like Picasso, Matisse, and Giacometti, created bronzes that both retained a connection to the past and relied mainly on modernist ideas regarding the figure and space.
Now there is an artist in New York, Mark LaRiviere, who is courageously helping to revivify bronze-figure sculpture. With a method that links the modern and the age-old tradition, LaRiviere goes beyond both and offers an exciting addition to the form in “Personage: Bronze Sculptures” at the New York Artists Equity Gallery (through December 23). LaRiviere’s process begins with his personal perception of his subject: he does not view his subjects as objects to be molded according to some rigid style or tradition. Of course, his perception must be influenced by every figure he has seen, touched, or imagined, in addition to every sculpture he has ever seen, from those of the ancient Greeks to the Chinese, as well as the Italian Renaissance, the likes of Rodin, and so on.
LaRiviere has digested these various influences but works without allegiance to any single style, though his eye seems similar to those of the ancients. His work recalls their worn-out, bent bronzes dredged from shipwrecks and unburied from ruined cities. But the modern is essential to his idiom too: Degas, Rodin, Picasso, Matisse, Giacometti, and Tucker are brought to mind. And his free marking, gouging, and flaying of the surface of the bronzes, like insults and caresses to human skin remind us of the medium of painting. As he has written, “I search for discovered rhythms, forms, and movements that become apparent as I work . . . with a sense uncertainty.”
LaRiviere has thus produced a collection of unusual bronzes that look ancient but still manage to surprise. The field of bronze-figure sculpting could be revitalized by such work as this: it remains recognizably connected both to the high achievements of the past and the modern interventions, but is also utterly fresh, personal, whole, and current. Great accomplishments in art are not the products of attack and clever subversion, they are the results of rejuvenation and renewal. LaRiviere’s work fits this mold.
I asked LaRiviere the following: “I get the feeling that these pieces at the Equity Gallery are not depictions of models or specific people you know, nor begun from them. But they do, of course, become very specific beings in themselves when you are done with them. Is this correct?” His answer: “You are correct. All made up, but hopefully depicting a kind of current specificity.”
Elsewhere, LaRivere has written that “forms emerge that live today and yet feel as if they have existed always . . . and always, the question remains: how can I bring forth these figures honestly, reflecting a sense of truth that feels in sync with our time?” He achieves this with great force, depth of form, and delicacy. His figures are both universal and personal.
LaRiviere has been making art in the New York scene for more than four decades. His focus for most of that time has been sculpture, but he began as a painter and was one of the founders of the Painting Center in 1993. His art shows the heights of human capability and empathy.