The body language of the female form
FOR more than 40 years, Robert Graham has created provocative figurative works, relying on live models as inspiration. So in describing his latest exhibition at the USC Fisher Gallery -- more than 100 paintings and sculptures of the female form, all spawned from small clay figures created by hand in a matter of seconds, then recast in bronze and silver -- he says paradoxically, “It’s actually the same work I’ve always been doing, only it’s different.”
What’s different is the 69-year-old artist’s ability to use cutting-edge scanning software in conjunction with rapid prototyping machines to create large copies of his works. The copies, made with nylon and an amber-like photopolymer substance, are so precise that even when they are enlarged tenfold, viewers can still see his fingerprints from the original clay forms.
The abstract gestural figures give the appearance of three-dimensional sketches, but according to Graham -- who resides in Venice with his wife, Anjelica Huston -- nothing could be further from the truth: “A sketch implies you’re going to come back and refine, but for me, refining doesn’t make sense, because you’re just going away from a particular moment.”
Though this is the first time his work has appeared at the gallery, he’s no stranger to the area. His female figures adorn the third-floor clerestory windows at USC’s Watt Hall, and just across Exposition Boulevard, one of his best-known civic monuments, “The Olympic Gateway,” fronts the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
-- Alex Chun
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‘ROBERT GRAHAM: BODY OF WORK’
WHERE: USC Fisher Gallery, 823 Exposition Blvd., L.A.
WHEN: noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; ends Feb. 9
PRICE: Free
INFO: (213) 740-4561, www.fishergallery.org
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