Art: Bronzed and beautiful

By T.J. McNAMARA

Big is beautiful? Not always. But in Western art it has been the general idea.

Look at Michelangelo, Rubens and the huge paintings of some 20th century minimalists. One effect of the obsession with size is that the work of artists who choose a small scale is overlooked, even here in New Zealand.

The small size is often imposed by the chosen mediums. Prints cannot be hung on a wall with paintings and a small bronze sculpture is a different matter from big, public statues.

This week there are exhibitions by two remarkable New Zealand artists that have not had the wide recognition they deserve, perhaps because one has always been a printmaker and the other has made medals and small works in bronze.

Marion Fountain, whose show Retour aux Sources is at the Judith Anderson Gallery, has an established international reputation as a medallist. This exhibition makes it clear that she is also a superb sculptor.

The show of 350 pieces has been brought here from her base in Paris with the aid of sponsorship from Air New Zealand.

There are excellent examples of her medals which make very sensitive use of the opulent curves of women's bodies within the generally circular shape. The medals also make use of motifs that show a clear Maori influence, notably in Uomo Uccello, a medal done in Rome in 1985.

Since Brancusi set the example at the beginning of last century there have been innumerable sculptors who have made smoothly curving polished figures based on natural and human forms.

What makes Marion Fountain's bronzes exceptional is, one, the sharp observation and good design skills that make the work fascinating in detail and, two, the element of grotesqueness that ensures the work is seldom predictable and never sentimental.

There is an astringency in her concepts that makes the work both surprising and stimulating.

Yet the astringency does not exclude the sensuous. In a lovely work such as Helen the Owl, the movement of hands and robe around the thighs of the elegant figure evokes the beauty of Helen, but the overall owl shape not only confers monumentality on what is a small work but also adds elements of omen, menace and classical reference.

Self Portrait as an Edible Object and Pandora's Box combine beautifully drawn soft curves with just a hint of satire to add spice.

Among so many pieces the invention is amazing. There is the rocking rhythm of Ecstasy Boat, the humour of the two people in Bananes, the crouching power that tensions the two figures combined in Lioness, the wit of Chromosome.

Only occasionally is there a hint of the banal, as in Apocalypse II, where the artist is less engaged than in the works with feminine overtones.

It is an immensely copious show that ranges from 1985 to the remarkable Lapin made in Paris this year, and its comprehensiveness should reinforce Marian Fountain's place in the pantheon of our artists.

Barry Cleavin, whose exhibition is at the Muka Gallery in Brown Street, Ponsonby, has a place that is already secure. His work and his reputation do not stand as high as they might given the consistent quality of his output, perhaps not just because he is a print-maker but also because he has had comparatively few exhibitions in Auckland.

Like the Marian Fountain exhibition, this show of work by Barry Cleavin requires close attention to a large number of small units.

The gallery has been divided and in the first room are a group of etchings which range from 1966 to the present. In these works details are important. The flying figure in Jeanette Looking is given extra frisson by the needle and thread she carries to stitch things up.

These works are supplemented by recent prints. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, on donkeys but with menacing scythes, return through a landscape of genetically modified Still Life under a lurid sky.

In the main room are a number of Cleavin's "books." These resemble the surrealist novels made in collage by Max Ernst, published in 1934. These books use small ink-jet prints in series and each tiny work has its own visual and intellectual stimulus.

Some, like The Early Bird, do that special Cleavin thing with bones, like planting a human skull on the skeleton of a bird.

Wit and irony are abundant but there is also a serious purpose, most notably in the series of visual counterparts to texts from the anatomising of war by Clausewitz.

The texts extend to palindromes (which are the same read forward and backward - Madam I'm Adam) and the wit extends to suggestions for monuments for Cathedral Square in Christchurch and a Monument to the Presidential Erection.

There is also the macabre, in the distorted figures of This is the Day the Surrealists Have Their Picnic.

When you add into the mix prints that are richly coloured for all their small size you have a lode of extraordinarily brilliant images that repays endless mining.