Its Friday, the weekend lies ahead of me, so Im taking time to show a little love to another extremely talented and prolific artist whose work I love. Marisol was born in Paris to Venezuelan parents on May 22, 1930. Near the end of the WW2, Marisol’s father moved the family to LA, California where Marisol was enrolled in the Westlake School for Girls. Marisol first studied art in evening drawing classes at the Jepson School in LA when she was sixteen. By this time, she was already proficient in representational drawing. Catholicism imbued Marisol with beliefs in mystery, miracles, intercession and awareness of a spiritual/supernatural aspect of life that permeated both her character and work as an artist. As she revealed in a 1984 interview for Smithsonian, Marisol suffered self-inflicted acts of penance for a brief period in her early teens. She walked on her knees until they bled, kept silent for long periods and tied ropes tightly around her waist in emulation of saints and martyrs. As a sculptor, Marisol has always followed her own path. Not Pop, Not Op, It’s Marisol! was the way Grace Glueck titled her article in the New York Times in 1965, and this difficulty in categorizing her work and answering the question Who is Marisol still continues to be evident in much that is written about her today. Marisol passed through many art movements, but it is true that it is difficult to situate her within any one movement. She was close to Abstract Expressionism and was, without a doubt, an important figure of American Pop, producing her John Wayne in 1963, the same year that Andy Warhol created his first Marilyn. But she went her own way appropriating elements from varied sources ranging from American primitive art, the aestheticism of ancient Egyptian art, the legacy of the Italian Renaissance, contemporary social rites and conventions, as well as her own personal history and identity. Silence in Marisol’s work is very meaningful. She handles silence with mastery. It is thoroughly present in her work. She gives it form and weight.
Posted on: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 21:24:05 +0000
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