Medardo Rosso

The mystery and fragility of this head is shocking.

When you’re strolling through a museum and you come upon a Medardo Rosso sculpture of a child’s head, you will be shocked and breathless.  In your instinctive protectiveness you may throw your jacket over the display case and shoo everybody away.

The vulnerability of the child–not just this child, but every child—is made all the more immediate by the fact that the head is made of wax, more precisely,  plaster covered with molten wax.  What could be more fragile. The child is malleable, quite tangibly soft and ephemeral.

Some of his heads of children are cast in bronze.  Even then, the child is fragile and profoundly mysterious.

 

Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) was an Italian sculptor who lived in Paris where he befriended August Rodin (1840-1917).

Rosso never attained the recognition that Rodin did. Not surprising, since Rodin gave the Belle Epoque Parisians heroically tormented males and reproductively receptive females.

In front of a Rodin, I reflect on what it was like to believe in heroes.

In the presence of a Medardo Rosso, I feel.

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

www.katherinehilden.com

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

www.khilden.com

Read Full Post »

Out of Focus? Oh, Good.

At the end of class there’s never enough time, it seems, to transition from the rich web of associations that has been spinning in our minds to the rules of the road in the practical world out there. I sometimes forget to take photos of the students’ work and sometimes I’m too rushed when I make the rounds with my camera.

As you can see, the photo of this student’s drawing was taken in haste.  It’s obviously blurred. You can barely make out the head and upper torso of a draped figure.

I do wish I had a clear shot of that fine drawing.

But I don’t regret having this blurry view.  I immediately found it moving.

The feelings of incompletion and ambiguity have been threads running through the past few posts.  Look at this photo for a while and observe what happens in your mind.

There are examples of mystery and “veiledness” that go back quite a ways in Western Art.  My first association was to Medardo Rosso’s heads of children.  Up next.

Drawing by Chelsea. Graphite on paper, ~12″ x 10″

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

www.katherinehilden.com

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

www.khilden.com

Read Full Post »

When we talk with people we tend to look at their eyes.  Involuntary twitches often offer a clue to  deeper, unverbalized feelings .  Small wonder that when we draw faces we zoom in on the eyes and we tend overdraw them.

I encourage my students, when drawing a face, to put in the pupils last.  Let the other features and the quality of the markmaking itself, carry the expression. Put in the pupils with a flick of the pencil.

This requires self-restraint and students seem to find it hard to follow this advice.

What a surprise, then, to see the above drawing in class.  I asked the class what they thought of it, at this stage, without any eyes at all.  Approval all around.  Everyone found it moving, as is. One person said, the expression was “tentative.”  A good description.

This drawing by Laurel reminded me of Medardo Rosso’s heads of children.  He often sculpted in plaster and then delicately poured wax over the plaster form.  The effect is one of extreme introversion.  In his faces he does not emphasize the eyes, in fact he often veils them in wax.  But the face does not appear “eyeless” at all.  Instead the face conveys deep feeling .  Medardo Rosso’s faces are also tentative in the sense that they appear to be quietly paying attention to everything around them.

In 1892, Rosso sculpted this head of a boy after he merely glimpsed the child, not by having him pose. Rosso described the head as “a vision of purity in a banal world.”

Medardo Rosso, 1858-1928.  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1990.304

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.

www.khilden.com 

http://facefame.wordpress.com

http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com

www.katherinehilden.com

Read Full Post »