In my previous post, I laid out the predicament facing contemporary abstract sculpture. I argued that the plethora of handsome man-made objects in the modern world made it hard for people even to notice abstract sculpture, let alone contemplate it for its aesthetic value. I offered a list of some of the most famous abstract sculptors -- artists who have made it to the top of the art-career mountain -- and pointed out that much of the time they make sculpture that is actually better described as either “installation art” or “assemblage” rather than straightforward sculptural objects.

It’s not easy to find serious, good abstract artists who make straightforward, sculptural objects. Simply put, abstract sculpture has gone out of fashion -- even more than abstract painting -- and it takes a certain dogged determination for any sculptor to keep on making single sculptural objects instead of throwing in the towel and becoming an installation or video artist. The audience for art has become accustomed to “wow art” -- to art that moves, shines, sparkles or lights up, or art that, at the very least, takes over a whole room.

Despite this, one can find serious, good sculptors who make what I like to call “real sculpture” -- otherwise known as three-dimensional art objects intended for aesthetic contemplation. Recently, I visited the studios of two of them -- Don Gummer and Mel Kendrick -- both of whom I know and whose work I like. I’ve visited their studios before, but this time I was on a mission: What drives these two artists to keep on making regular ol’ sculpture when the art world largely ignores it?

Sculpture has often been called the sister art to painting; yet for the life of me, I can’t figure out how they are related to one another other than that it takes eyes to see them. Sculptors wrestle with three dimensions, not two, and spend a lot of time figuring out how to present their art -- on or off a pedestal (and if on one, what kind it should be), on a table, or a wall, or hanging from the ceiling, or placed directly on the floor.  Painters, by contrast, hardly know the back of a work of art exists. Painters talk continually about effects; sculptors delve into explanations of how they went about making their art. As Kendrick put it, “Ninety-five percent of what I do as an artist no one sees.”

Gummer is drawn to what he calls the “honesty of the sculpture.” Sculpture is direct and forthcoming in a way that painting is not, since how it’s made is almost always pretty evident. Painting always carries some illusion (a far cry from honesty) because the moment the painter makes a mark on a canvas, illusion of “this” on top of “that” shows up. Kendrick put it this way: “Sculpture differs from painting because with sculpture process is the language.”

Gummer says that he wants his sculpture to “have dignity” -- by which he means that he wants it to transcend mere physical fact-ness. Ordinary machine-produced objects, no matter how handsome, are incapable of transcendence. (What could be sillier than the idea of a transcendent toaster?) Paradoxically, most of Gummer’s sculpture is made out of such very permanent material as steel, aluminum, and bronze. The artist spends his days working in the studio, yet his work demands plenty of additional days spent at the foundry, checking that things go right when they’re transformed into bronze. For all the light and air permeating Gummer’s volumetric sculptures, their materials imply an extremely long shelf life that implies, in turn, that they transcend the fleeting nature of the things of this world that are doomed to decay. 

Kendrick’s works tend toward the raw -- wood and concrete rather than bronze. But he, too, yearns to make objects that express the beauty of carefully designed, sculpted form -- individualized beauty that is far different from the stamped-out good looks of a toaster. Both sculptors pay keen attention to the “art part” of their art -- what it looks like, from multiple angles, in terms of proportion, balance and liveliness. They frequently make forms whose parts semi-secretly relate to one another -- parts that are inverses of one another, for example, or duplicate parts of a form that are turned in such a way that recognizing their relation to one another takes time.

Both Gummer and Kendrick mostly make what we’d call “normal sized” art -- art that could fit in a living room or, if outside, in a modest-sized garden. Occasionally they make very large art. Gummer’s hanging rock sculpture (Primary Separation), permanently installed in front of MassMoca, in North Adams, Mass. (an example of his larger work) is ominous and at the same time, for all its weight, appears oddly light. Kendrick’s Markers (on view at Madison Square Park in New York through the end of 2009) consists of five 10-foot-tall black and white concrete blocky formations, out of which he’s carved slashing, curving tunnels. (I won’t explain how they’re made except to say it takes an explanation.) Their tops and bottoms relate as opposites in an utterly surprising manner. The effect is grand (Kendrick has been influenced by looking at cathedrals), as well as fun and rustic, as if the sculptures are individual cows, grazing in a line on a green field. 

Yet for all their sense of form, these large works don’t constitute the major work of either Gummer or Kendrick. Instead, they’re merely the result of the artists being ready and willing to seize an opportunity (in the form of a commission) when it knocks.

Perhaps the reason their art transcends the problems of the sculpted object in an age already crammed with objects is pretty simple. These two artists, early on, decided that making straightforward sculpture that looks like art, and that resembles nothing else other than other art, is nothing to be ashamed of. Neither of them shows interest in the trendily weird, nor in having to prove themselves by making “installation art” -- which at this point is about as exciting as a bottom drawer. Both artists accept sculpture’s limitations without going into paroxysms of doubt. As Kendrick put it, “the word ‘sculpture’ isn’t exactly sexy any more, but so what?”

Gummer and Kendrick have developed a body of knowledge pertaining to their sculpture that’s been built up from decades of working in the studio. Both have internalized the sculpture that came before them, and are completely familiar with what's going on in the contemporary art world. Kendrick put it this way: “Look, you can’t make your work while looking around you all the time. Sure, maybe, if I were a young artist today, I’d choose to do video art. But I have no complaints. I’m doing exactly what I want to do.”

This last comment has nothing to do with self-indulgence. For both Gummer and Kendrick, doing “what they want to do” means accepting the defined boundaries of sculpture without much ado, and then getting on with making sculpture. In today’s art world, that’s called transcendence.

For more information, see here and here.