Art: Track Through the Jungle?

To many a gallerygoer, 20th century sculpture is a jungle of confusion, full of weird shapes and ominous words like cubism, futurism and constructivism. But Andrew C. Ritchie, director of painting and sculpture at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, thinks he sees a track through it all.

His conviction: some of the best of the modernists are edging away from abstract designs and are beginning to rediscover the human frame. In so doing, he believes, mid-century artists are trending back toward Rodin—and the century’s early spirit—after a long spell of sculpture-as-geometry. In demonstration of his idea, Ritchie has assembled a remarkable exhibit of 103 pieces of 20th century sculpture and put it on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Holes & Lumps. Ritchie’s show begins with some of the early giants: Auguste Rodin’s skin-smooth St. John the Baptist. with its supple lines and easy Renaissance grace; Arietide Maillol’s pensive Mediterranean, heavier and thicker; Constantin Brancusi’s early abstractions. All the abstractions of the ’20s and ’30s, says Ritchie, flowed out of the work and theory of those three men. Rodin used to say that sculpture was merely “the hole and the lump”; his admirers carried the idea to a ruthlessly literal conclusion.

Philadelphians saw a tortured bronze Growth by France’s Jean Arp that looks like a fractured ham bone, a carved wood Reclining Figure by Britain’s Henry Moore, all lumps and holes, with tiny breasts and huge, finlike legs. There were slim bronze stringbeans for human figures in City Square by Switzerland’s Alberto Giacometti, wrought iron spikes and loops for a Woman Combing Her Hair by Spain’s Julio Gonzalez, tinkling wire tendrils for a Streetcar by U.S. Mobilist Alexander Calder.

Back to the Body. The final portion of the show spans the past 15 years, and there Ritchie finds his back-to-the-body trend. There are two recent statues by old Cubist Pablo Picasso. One is a touching figure of a Shepherd Holding a Lamb, the other a small Owl sitting wise and silent. There are some late sculpture by such militant moderns as Jacques Lipchitz and Henri Laurens, and they too seem to be getting more natural—even Henry Moore’s recent lumps and holes look more like people. Finally, Ritchie shows statues by two Italians who have worked from the beginning in the tradition of Rodin: Marino Marini, who does spraddle-legged horses and dumpy riders, and Giacomo Manzu, whose warmly human Child on Chair, of a relaxed and innocently nude young girl, was one of the exhibit’s highlights.

Director Ritchie, who plans a trip to Chicago before bringing his show to Manhattan next spring, is not sure just why artists are finding the human form more interesting. He thinks the war may have shocked artists out of their preoccupation with geometry and generalizations. And he doesn’t know how long the new trend will last. All he can do is sit back and watch the chips fly. Says he: “You just have to wait for the artist to go where he wants to go.”