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Arts & Entertainment

Cantor Arts Center Unveils Permanent Contemporary Arts Exhibit

A collection of 25 contemporary works explore the human figure.

Featuring 25 diverse depictions of the human figure, Go Figure! opened on Sept. 1 at the Cantor Arts Center. 

Appropriate enough for this age of globalization, the works represent a cultural cacophony of styles, techniques, and perspectives. Curator Hilarie Faberman chose the works, culling them mostly from the museum's modern and contemporary collection of 2700 objects.

"Although modern art is often identified with abstraction, many important artists of the last 60 years have explored figuration," Faberman said. "Whether theirs is a depiction of a real person, a fragment of the human body or a work of the imagination or fantasy, artists over the last half century have explored the human body as a vessel for life and the spirit."

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While more traditional approaches to the human form are offered by Martin Blank and Robert Graham, creations by Roger Brown, Willie Cole, Viola Frey, Richard Shaw and Richard Stankiewitz exemplify a more whimsical side of the exhibition, and sculptor Robert Arneson contributes a powerful, politically charged piece.

Cole pays homage to his African-American heritage in "Sunbeam",  a steam iron transformed to suggest a West African household guardian. Cole's art--which typically explores identity, race, consumerism, and the environment-- has recently been shown in an exhibit called "Anxious Objects: Willie Cole's Favorite Brands," which toured nationally including a stop at the Cantor Arts Center in 2007.

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Frey is another frequent user of found objects. Her 1981 piece "Aquarium Man" is a figurine of cast decorative ceramics that incorporates outstretched hands holding a cigar,  a pair of baseball players, and a fish fin.

"The kitsch figurine – a symbol of the cycle of production and disposal of consumer culture - is resurrected and given a new and unexpected life," Faberman said. When "Aquarium Man" was included in the "Pop to the Present" exhibit at Cantor last year, San Francisco Chronicle art critic Kenneth Baker wrote, "Viola Frey's 'Aquarium Man' can stand as well as any single work by her that I know as a marker of the true mystery, humor and craft intelligence of her art."

Also from the 1980s,  Richard Shaw's "Basket Case" (1986) is a sculpture of porcelain with decal overglaze and china paint that evokes 17th century Dutch and 19th century still life paintings. Shaw is one of the most respected and collected artists in contemporary ceramics, according to the Frank Lloyd Gallery website. Emerging from the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s, he has long been affiliated with the Funk movement, bringing new life to found objects.

Brown is also known for funky sculptures and quirky paintings, memorable for their fascination with current events and impending disasters, both natural and man-made. Ominous clouds representing pollution cast a spell over the Mickey Mouse ears of Disneyland ('the happiest place on Earth") in his painting, "Another Shitty Day in Paradise," which was completed in 1993 just four years before his death from AIDS.  

Stankiewitz's work is associated with Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, assemblage, junk sculpture—even neo-Dada and the French Nouveau Réalisme movement. His  "Urchin" (1955) is made of steel and found metal and evokes a chimney sweep or a street child.

Faberman devoted a portion of Go Figure! to the mask as art object, which she describes as "non-functional, (yet) reflecting psychological, ideological and aesthetical concerns of the sculptor who made it and in some way a statement of the human condition."

Bay Artist Robert Arneson's unmistakable anit-war statement "Global Death and Destruction"fits this description, as the finely sculpted severed and bludgeoned head serves as a powerful reminder of the horrors of armed conflict.

Go Figure! will be on display indefinitely with occasional changes in the the Oshman Family Rotunda as well as in two adjacent locations, the H. L. Kwee Galleria and the McMurty Family Terrace.

Faberman points out that the rotunda was remodeled for the exhibit to enable interesting juxtapositions of sculptures and paintings. "This exhibit is ideally suited for docents teaching kids about contemporary art," she said. "The works are not subtle or abstract; they're great examples of expressionism."

The Cantor Arts Center is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 AM to 5 PM and on Thursday from 11 AM to 8 PM. Its website is www.museum.stanford.edu

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