Artist:
Mark di Suvero
Title:
Yes! For Lady Day
Year:
1969
Adress:
Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park
www.sculpture.org:
Jan Garden Castro: Was your philosophy during the late ’50s and ’60s closer to Abstract Expressionism, Constructivism, or the objets trouvés school?
Mark di Suvero: That’s all over the place. I think there was something very true that had a lot to do with French and European art. You call it objets trouvés, but it is a re-valorization of ignored objects whether they’re found or junk. By calling it junk art, critics dismissed it, but artists at that time were trying to show beauty that had been passed over. In what I think is one of my better pieces, Yes! For Lady Day, I used a railroad car. When you cut a cylinder at an angle other than 90 degrees to its axis, you end up with an ellipse. It has an elliptical cut that moves, so that the viewer can get inside the piece and see the world framed in a moving ellipse. What is so stark about the piece is that there is all of the work that happened with riveting—that was a special way of joining steel before welding was invented. People built beautiful things then that mostly ended up in the scrap pile. Riveting was a way of handling the hot iron, the rivets themselves, and I find the pieces beautiful because of that. Those forms are part of an industrial landscape that had been dismissed. There was a whole assemblage movement with terrific artists like Richard Stankiewicz, David Smith, and Picasso. MoMA eventually gave them a show.
www.theparisreview.org:
Like the city, di Suvero’s sculptures provided many opportunities for interaction. Some early works incorporated benches or swings, which invited their audiences to experience the work physically as well as visually. As Elizabeth Baker pointed out in Art in America, these seats offered an ideal perspective from which to view the sculptures: from within. Di Suvero strove to make his art as accessible as possible, including to people who do not regularly visit museums or galleries.
www.wikipedia.org:
Marco Polo "Mark" di Suvero (born September 18, 1933 in Shanghai, China) is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient.
Marco Polo di Suvero was born to Matilde Millo di Suvero and Vittorio di Suvero (later known as Victor E.), both Italians of Sephardic Jewish descent. Di Suvero was one of four children, the eldest being Victor di Suvero. His father was a naval attaché for the Italian government and the family resided in Shanghai until his father was relocated to Tientsin shortly after the birth of the family's last son in 1936.
With the outbreak of World War II, di Suvero immigrated to San Francisco, California with his family in February 1941 aboard the S.S. President Cleveland.
Di Suvero attended City College of San Francisco from 1953 to 1954, followed by the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1954 to 1955. He began creating sculptures while at UCSB after reflecting that he couldn't make an original contribution in his philosophy major. Under the guidance of Robert Thomas, who allowed di Suvero to take his sculpting course, his work began to flourish. He transferred to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in 1957.
His early works were large outdoor pieces that incorporated wooden timbers from demolition buildings, tires, scrap metal and structural steel. This exploration has transformed over time into a focus on H-beams and heavy steel plates. Many of the pieces contain sections that are allowed to swing and rotate giving the overall forms a considerable degree of motion. He prides himself on his hands-on approach to the fabrication and installation of his work. Di Suvero pioneered the use of a crane as a sculptor's working tool.
His style is associated with the abstract expressionism movement, but directly evokes the spirit of the Russian post-revolution constructivism. Constructivism is strongly associated with concepts of an utopian socialist reconstruction, but came crashing down when the Stalin and Hitler empires failed. Di Suvero is the first artist post-war to revive the constructivist movement. The sculptures can be touched, and they are resistant enough to be climbed on.
Jan Garden Castro: Was your philosophy during the late ’50s and ’60s closer to Abstract Expressionism, Constructivism, or the objets trouvés school?
Mark di Suvero: That’s all over the place. I think there was something very true that had a lot to do with French and European art. You call it objets trouvés, but it is a re-valorization of ignored objects whether they’re found or junk. By calling it junk art, critics dismissed it, but artists at that time were trying to show beauty that had been passed over. In what I think is one of my better pieces, Yes! For Lady Day, I used a railroad car. When you cut a cylinder at an angle other than 90 degrees to its axis, you end up with an ellipse. It has an elliptical cut that moves, so that the viewer can get inside the piece and see the world framed in a moving ellipse. What is so stark about the piece is that there is all of the work that happened with riveting—that was a special way of joining steel before welding was invented. People built beautiful things then that mostly ended up in the scrap pile. Riveting was a way of handling the hot iron, the rivets themselves, and I find the pieces beautiful because of that. Those forms are part of an industrial landscape that had been dismissed. There was a whole assemblage movement with terrific artists like Richard Stankiewicz, David Smith, and Picasso. MoMA eventually gave them a show.
www.theparisreview.org:
Like the city, di Suvero’s sculptures provided many opportunities for interaction. Some early works incorporated benches or swings, which invited their audiences to experience the work physically as well as visually. As Elizabeth Baker pointed out in Art in America, these seats offered an ideal perspective from which to view the sculptures: from within. Di Suvero strove to make his art as accessible as possible, including to people who do not regularly visit museums or galleries.
www.wikipedia.org:
Marco Polo "Mark" di Suvero (born September 18, 1933 in Shanghai, China) is an abstract expressionist sculptor and 2010 National Medal of Arts recipient.
Marco Polo di Suvero was born to Matilde Millo di Suvero and Vittorio di Suvero (later known as Victor E.), both Italians of Sephardic Jewish descent. Di Suvero was one of four children, the eldest being Victor di Suvero. His father was a naval attaché for the Italian government and the family resided in Shanghai until his father was relocated to Tientsin shortly after the birth of the family's last son in 1936.
With the outbreak of World War II, di Suvero immigrated to San Francisco, California with his family in February 1941 aboard the S.S. President Cleveland.
Di Suvero attended City College of San Francisco from 1953 to 1954, followed by the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1954 to 1955. He began creating sculptures while at UCSB after reflecting that he couldn't make an original contribution in his philosophy major. Under the guidance of Robert Thomas, who allowed di Suvero to take his sculpting course, his work began to flourish. He transferred to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in 1957.
His early works were large outdoor pieces that incorporated wooden timbers from demolition buildings, tires, scrap metal and structural steel. This exploration has transformed over time into a focus on H-beams and heavy steel plates. Many of the pieces contain sections that are allowed to swing and rotate giving the overall forms a considerable degree of motion. He prides himself on his hands-on approach to the fabrication and installation of his work. Di Suvero pioneered the use of a crane as a sculptor's working tool.
His style is associated with the abstract expressionism movement, but directly evokes the spirit of the Russian post-revolution constructivism. Constructivism is strongly associated with concepts of an utopian socialist reconstruction, but came crashing down when the Stalin and Hitler empires failed. Di Suvero is the first artist post-war to revive the constructivist movement. The sculptures can be touched, and they are resistant enough to be climbed on.