Today I saw, and fell in love with, this little sculpture by Juan Muñoz (photos not mine - click to enlarge)
It was inspired by a work of Gentile Bellini, which I saw in 2006 when it visited the National Gallery from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
I was thrilled and delighted by the Juan Muñoz Retrospective at Tate Modern. Had only seen photos of his stuff, heard mostly that friends found it amusing and provoking. Yes, amusing and provoking, but also warm, beguiling, impressive, disturbing, subtle, alarmingly clever. I could have lingered for days before this or this.
But the scribes, both Bellini's and Muñoz's, just... utterly... intrigue... and... entrance me. So small, intent and self-contained. And yet their work - copying, transcribing, illustrating the words of others - is quite the opposite of self-contained. I suppose it's what I'd like to be, a scribe, but I was born too late and they were always men.
3 comments:
Oh, wow, Jean, thank you for this! I had not heard of Munoz until I saw two huge huge room size installations of his figures, like Room 10, in the fantastic Louisiana Museum in Denmark. It just blew me away. Then a year later he died, so young. Yet I've not found much about him on the web, this is one of the best sites. Gosh, makes me want to fly over to seen this!
Reminds me of a Segal plaster, who I startled at in the DIA years ago. An all white, rough figure, but with such presence.
Thank you.
Marja-Leena, it's almost worth crossing the ocean for!
Zhoen, you mentioned Segal before, when I was raving about Antony Gormley. I don't know his work, and must look for it.
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