This artist's sculptural work is so naturalistic and real it is unreal and surreal. Ron Mueck's sculptures, of people, catch emotional moments of pensive discovery. Why this holds so much appeal, artistically and culturally, might be because we are used to so much "presentation" that off-moment real, even if hypperreal, beckons us too pay attention?
Pregnant Mother, the piece at left, was purchased by Australia's National Museum in 2002. New mother - look how he's captured it below right, in his Mother and Child. When you see his work, you won't be likely to forget it. In a world where we can capture everything digitally, a realism in sculptural forms larger-than-life or smaller-than-life give a sense of bigger-than-life, wierder-than-life, more-than-life. His works are realistically illusionistic, done to unrealistic scales in silicone and fiberglass resins using traditional casting techniques.
Mueck was born in 1958 in Australia and is a London-based modern (I would say postmodern) artist whose work is in London's Tate Modern and currently is on display at Fort Worth's Modern Art Museum through October 21. I'd his work in museums in Tennessee and London but I hadn't seen a group of his work displayed. This one is worth seeing. If you can get there, go. His 13 works on display are stunning (Mother and Child is not included in that exhibit).
An untrained artist with toymaker parents -- and look what he's done. He started making dolls. Now his work is riveting crowds. WashingtonPost has a good slide show of his work that gives you a sense of scale of his works as viewers gawk and take in his works.
He first gained international fame ten years ago with a small scale sculpture of his father, called Dead Man. A friend looked at my book on the artist's work this weekend and found it very eery.
When he was just 43, (now he is at the 50 mark) his critics wondered if he would just be a blip on the art world screen:
Newsweek critic Peter Plagens lauded Mueck as "the best thing to happen to figurative sculpture in ... generations." Topping that, a cover story for Modern Painters raved that Mueck was "the equal of Vermeer." Others aren't as enamored. Critics have branded him "a one-hit wonder" or snobbishly dismissed him as a "model maker."
His Big Man (untitled), left, is in the Hirschorn Museum collection. That is where he had his first American solo show five years ago.
I think his work is sensational. So do others... Flickr photos from fans share the marvel. Real beyond real. What do you think?
I think they are beautiful works of art.
Haven't been to an art gallery in years. A very good friend of mind just bought a gallery in denver anxious to visit her soon.
Posted by: janet | September 17, 2007 at 06:40 AM
Amazing. So lifelike it is startling. So un-airbrushed and 'imperfect', like real people!
Posted by: allison | September 17, 2007 at 07:27 AM
Fabulous!
Posted by: Rhonda | September 17, 2007 at 09:26 AM
Hmm. I am a little put off by Mueck's work. But you are right that he is on to something. It makes me nervous, somehow, to imagine a museum crowd looking at this work.
What do you think of Francis Bacon or Lucien Freud, or those plasticized and colorized corpses? Or Bansky?
Posted by: Hattie | September 17, 2007 at 12:08 PM
Wow! What talent! I'm off to check out his slide show. Thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Overwhelmed With Joy! | September 17, 2007 at 12:16 PM
Those are amazing and very different. Thanks for sharing!
Posted by: Kathleen Marie | September 17, 2007 at 02:40 PM
Hattie, I love Lucien Freud's work -- or at least the ones I've seen. His portrait of Queen Elizabeth is my favorite portrait of her.
On the bodies -- I came across the next exhibit of them this morning while doing research. The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose is opening the BodyWorlds2 exhibit September 27. Two of my children - but not me - saw this fascinating exhibit of real human bodies preserved by Plastination when it was in NYC when we lived there. I'm sorry I missed it and now live between the two coasts. It is eery real, too.
Posted by: MotherPie | September 17, 2007 at 03:12 PM
I went to college with a guy who wanted to become an obstetrician because, as he put it, "There is nothing so beautiful as a pregnant woman." Your artist would seem to be of the same ilk.
Posted by: Old Horsetail Snake | September 17, 2007 at 03:25 PM
I came over from Kathleen's Open Window because I saw your comment about Santa Fe. I was raised in Santa Fe and lived there through High School. I left in 1954 and moved to Albuquerque and then left NM in 1060. We go back quite often.
Susan
Posted by: Susan Joyce | September 17, 2007 at 07:38 PM
As a figurative painter, I appreciate his skill. I'm not sure I think they are beautiful. I am sure he is not Vermeer's equal. Vermeer has no equal.
Posted by: Antique Mommy | September 20, 2007 at 07:52 PM