ArtSeen
Ronald Bladen: Sculpture of the 1960s and 70s
JACOBSON HOWARD GALLERY | OCTOBER 16 – NOVEMBER 26, 2008
One of art’s longstanding bugaboos is the perceived difference between “rigorous” geometric art and “intuitive, expressive” art. If, however, such dark, dull formulations allow artists like Ronald Bladen to shine more brightly, then perhaps they aren’t all bad. Jacobson Howard Gallery’s recent exhibition Ronald Bladen: Sculpture of the 1960s and 70s was a modest reminder of Bladen’s maverick confounding of what were thought to be inherently inexpressive industrial materials with geometry into a very personal and poetic subject matter.

Bladen used crisp, black geometry in unabashedly emotive sculptures. At Jacobson Howard, “Black Lightning (Model)” and “Host of the Ellipse (Garden)” (both 1981) give a sense both of Bladen’s fascination with natural phenomena and his working process. Model, garden and monumental are Bladen’s three sizes, working his way up from one to the next as he produced each sculpture. Model-size sculptures are small enough to carry, with handcrafted wood panel surfaces over which black paint is applied with a brush. Garden sizes are spray painted aluminum and stand around human height. Monumental sizes don’t fit in a gallery. “Coltrane (Structural Model),” a real treat, is a small wood-and-nail model revealing the extreme intricacy of Bladen’s construction technique. Wonderfully complex and totally superfluous structurally, it gives a sense of how he sorted out the forms of his sculpture as he worked rather than planning a sculpture out ahead, as did many of his Minimalist peers, then having it fabricated.

Minimalism, as it has come to be understood, does not accurately describe Bladen’s work. It rather describes one pole of the above-mentioned bugaboo: rigorous geometry. Minimalist avatars Robert Morris, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin (among others) used their art history degrees and general verbosity to set the tone for how we think about hard-edge geometry in art: industrial, cerebral, and devoid of expressive gesture. This one-sided conception doesn’t even hold for the artists who advanced it, but not as the art historians tell it. Then there’s Bladen. The reason Bladen cuts less of a figure in art history’s mirror is that, though he worked with minimal, geometric form, he actively advocated values contrary to those of his peers: Bladen considered himself a romantic.

In this and in his sculpture, he is most closely allied with Tony Smith, who carried Finnegan’s Wake around in his back pocket and was known to give extended, impromptu readings from its pages. Neither sculptor shied away from grand gestures or distinctly imagistic sculptures. Both made paintings. They were inspiring contrarians who took pleasure in training and guiding younger artists. As such, it is hard to underestimate their importance as we cast about today for subject matter that moves beyond our contemporary doctrine of the ironic, abject and just plain superficial.
Bladen’s sculpture is proof that intense, emotive expression can exist in hard-edged geometric form. Both “Host of the Ellipse” and “Black Lightning” strain upward and outward, defying gravity, literally and figuratively representing an ideal of human union with nature. Bladen’s sculpture plays upon this dualist drama with the restraint inherent in his choice of form and color. The essential point, insofar as Minimalism and its impact on our thought is concerned, is that the industrial materials Bladen used are divested of whatever inherent meaning their origins may have held and transformed into vehicles for the sculptor’s imagination.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum
By Ann C. CollinsSEPT 2022 | ArtSeen
Use of the photo image in reworking narratives lies at the heart of Our Selves, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of ninety photographs made by women artists.

Singing in Unison:
Artists Need to Create On the Same Scale That Society Has the Capacity to Destroy
JUNE 2022 | Art
Rail Curatorial Projects is proud to present Singing in Unison: Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy, a multi-venue series of exhibitions that aims to foster social unity in light of the recent political climate and the COVID-19 pandemic. The works shown in these exhibitions exemplify the breadth of the creative world, with artists who are taught and self-taught, young and old, and hailing from every corner of the globe. Singing in Unison is a timely endeavor that celebrates the power of art as a public site to stage programming, including poetry readings, music and dance performances, panel discussions on the subject of democracy, and cooking performances by Rirkrit Tiravanija. All of this is done with the aim of enhancing the art of joining in our various communities and to bring people together.
Lisa Slominski’s Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists
By Jo Lawson-TancredJUNE 2022 | Art Books
Building on the history of Outsider art dating back to the 1970s, this book dives into the implications, limits, and paradoxes of the popular and problematic label. Placing the emphasis on the artists themselves and the formal properties of their work, the book foregrounds their practices over excessive biographic detail.
Jeff Koons. Shine
By Natalia GierowskaNOV 2021 | ArtSeen
Jeff Koons. Shine is Koonss most recent exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. This extensive exhibition features over 30 of the artists most lionized and varied works spanning from the 1970s until the present.