Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Armory show, 1913


While perusing the Armory galleries, the first work to draw my attention was Abastenia St. Leger Eberle's "White Slave." This sculpture takes a sharp departure from classical norms and the idyllic aesthetic of traditional art, which placed its emphasis on beauty and Romantic themes. Its portrayal of a pimp peddling the services of a young girl shines a light on the underworld of society and the human dregs which populate it. That the girl (and her pimp) are white adds a further polemical characteristic to the work by insisting to its Anglocentric audience that these subversive practices are not confined to other races, that this girl could be from a "respectable" family, that social ills know no race or class.




     Ethel Myers' bronze sculpture "Fifth Avenue Girl" depicts what appears to be an upper-class woman in emaciated countenance and pensive mood; perhaps a commentary on the decadence of the rich and the lack of physical (and spiritual) sustenance wealth can provide. This sculpture's significance lies in its suggestion that even the rich experience alienation and sorrow, that their wealth is not a safeguard against maladies that were traditionally associated with the lower classes.




In continuation of the theme of anti-traditionalism we have Marsden Hartley's "Still Life, No. 2." Hartley takes one of the most traditional, banal subjects of art, the fruit-bowl, and turns it on its head by using only black, white, and grey. This choice of color--or lack thereof--deprives the subject of its livelihood, its inherent naturality, thereby creating a sense of something both alive and dead--the fruit does not appear to be rotten, yet without being able to see its natural colors we are left with something not wholly of the world--somewhere "in between."