Marisol: A Retrospective
Politics, compassion and satire in wooden sculptures
Marisol, “Women and Dog,” 1963-1964
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY
Marisol Escobar’s signature wooden sculptures are big, blocky and imbued with politics, compassion and a heaping side of satire.
Created at the peak of her richly diverse career in the 1960s, Marisol’s mesmerizing, life-size figures are on display at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) until Jan. 21, 2024. Chief curator Mary-Dailey Desmarais says it is the most comprehensive retrospective ever devoted to the Venezuelan-American artist, whose name Marisol was carved out of Maria Sol Escobar. “She was really a star of her generation,” Desmarais says. “Reviewers were referring to her at the time as the artist of her generation.”
Marisol, “The Generals,” 1961-1962
Buffalo AKG Art Museum,© Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum)
Montreal is the first stop for this comprehensive – and long overdue, according to Desmarais – travelling retrospective. It was organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum which received a “historic and transformative” bequest from Marisol’s estate when the artist died at age 85 in 2016, says AKG chief curator Cathleen Chaffee. “We think what motivated her is that we were the first museum to buy her work in 1962 with a work called The Generals.”
The piece depicts the great revolutionary leaders of Marisol’s native Venezuela and her adopted home in the United States –Simon Bolivar and George Washington – absurdly seated together upon a barrel-shaped pony. “It has so much to do with Marisol’s identity but also cold war politics. It’s a fascinating work of art,” Chaffee notes.
Other figures range from American artist Georgia O’Keeffe and her dogs to a looming and solemn three-year old John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting a tiny funeral cortege of wooden trains and toy soldiers.There are the aggressively adorable Baby Boy and Baby Girl sculptures which may have been Marisol’s sardonic response to journalists frequently asking when she would become a wife and mother. Never, it turned out, in a prolific career that spanned almost 60 years.
Marisol, “The Party,” 1965-1966
Toledo Museum of Art. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Marisol also did multiple casts of her own hands, face, buttocks, lips and feet and numerous self portraits always giving barracudas, for example, her face. There are multiple Marisols in The Party, an installation of 15 stiffly elegant wooden figures all at the same function, carefully not talking to one another. One figure’s tiny, wooden breasts are exposed above a cocktail in a cut glass tumbler; another’s eyes have been replaced by a miniature TV screen emitting static.
“The Party poignantly illustrates that sense of feeling alone in a crowd,” Chaffee says. “It’s a really funny work that shows a remarkable breadth of her work as a sculptor.” Note the uniformed maid holding the tray of drinks at The Party: one side shows her with human legs and sensibly shod feet while the other side shows her with the hairy, hoofed gams of a beast of burden.
Marisol frequently became overwhelmed by the art scene, her celebrity and, in the late 1960s, the violence in the U.S. surrounding anti-Vietnam war protests. She would drop out to rejuvenate, learning how to scuba dive on one sojourn, which became a key element in her practice in the 1970s.
Marisol, “Mi Mama y Yo,” 1968
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, ©Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York (photo by Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum)
Most of the works in this retrospective are drawn from Marisol’s bequest to the AKG and, therefore, her personal collection, such as Mi Mama y Yo from 1968, depicting Marisol petulantly holding an umbrella over her mother at a park bench. For Chaffee, these works add intimacy to the show. “These are works that were close to her, that she lived with. Many were installed in her home and studio, and she saw them every day.”
Mary-Dailey Desmarais lauds Marisol as “an unafraid innovator”whose work continues to resonate. “Marisol was unafraid of being completely singular and original in what she was doing,” she says. “Nobody in her time was making life-size – sometimes bigger than life-size – wooden sculptures combining found objects, cast elements and drawings and drawing from popular culture. She continuously challenged herself.” ■
Marisol: A Retrospective continues at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts until Jan. 21, 2024
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