Museum Critique

Museum Art Critique

If you live in Dallas, most likely you have been to Northpark Mall. However, did you ever notice that Northpark is also a museum? Sort of. Most art people do not know about it, and the shoppers do not seem to care, but the place is owned by Ray Nasher of Nasher Sculpture Center, and he has placed an impressive percentage of his collection in front of Neiman’s, Barney’s, Victoria’s Secret, and the Watch Hut. For the sole purpose and interest in the art presented throughout the mall, I chose to visit Nasher Sculpture Center located in the Dallas Art District.

After I reach my destination in Downtown, I park my car and drop coins in the parking meter. As I am walking towards the museum, I go over my reading assignment and power point lecture for the Art Critiquing Process in my head, to mentally prepare myself. As I enter and walk to the admission desk, to my surprise, North Lake College students are free of charge. The assistants hands me a map, I look over it and prepare for my journey.

Following the map the first Gallery was the Woman: The Art of Gaston Lachaise. There is where I found my first choice of art, The Tragedy of Life by Boleslaw Biegas, a bronze sculpture made in 1910 in Paris. It is only upon approaching the figure for a closer view that the horrific details of the hands, face, and hair become fully noticeable. The long stream of hair streaks across the forehead, shoulders, and back. The figure's eyes are closed, limiting contact with the surrounding, an insight that is trapped in misery. The hands are held tightly across the cheek and mouths, and two long, bony fingers, press intensely into the eye sockets, illustrating a sign of suffering, a transfixing theme that is anything but naturally calm in nature. From a distance, what strike a viewer of this work are the simplicity, purity and evenhanded profile. The pose is stiffly upright and alert. The elbows are drawn together in front of the chest. Looking at the figure, from the shoulders down, the woman in The Tragedy of Life has the classic hourglass proportions and symmetry of many Greek figures. It is a three-dimensional sculpture; the bronze texture is soft to the touch. In this particular piece, the artist decided not to include an opening space between the legs, instead it is connected together. Biegas main focus on The Tragedy of Life was on the upper body of the sculpture. He demonstrated the figures horrific distress, the crying image covering her view from the outside. As I stare at the figure, I almost feel her painful energy, as the title clearly illustrates, the tragedy of life we encounter. The Tragedy of Life is a magnificent piece of art that clearly illustrates its intention.

Continuously, throughout the museum, in addition to more than 10,000 square feet of indoor gallery space, the one and a half-acre sculpture garden features settings of an outdoor museum. It includes one interesting work of art that I originally admired after seeing it at the Northpark Mall that is truly hard to miss is the Hammering Man by Jonathan Brodsky. This particular piece was one of the main reasons I chose Nasher Sculpture Center as my event location for my critique. Hammering Man was one of Jonathan Brodsky’s signature pieces during the 1980s, made of painted steel plate, cur-ten steel, and it includes a motor. It depicts a huge lanky silhouette figure with his head bent, striking a piece of metal held in his right hand with a hammer held in the hand of his moveable left arm. The Hammering Man is a three-dimensional form of a tall cutout figure shaped as a man holding a hammer in one hand, and it is painted all in black. Its proportion is large in scale. The men, determined, keep hammering in continuous labor, its motorized arms quietly commenting upon the senselessness around it. The Hammering Man is a symbol for the worker in all of us, labor. The motorized arm of the hammering man continuously swings its hammer back and forth, from the mind to the hand and back again. We all use our minds and our hands to create our world. The figure