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Miriam Bloom: strange attractors
(Sculpture) September 27 - November 17, 1999
Mon.-Thurs. 11-5 PM; Fri. 11-7 PM;
Sat. and Sun. 12-5 PM

DePaul University Art Gallery/ Chicago
2350 North Kenmore Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60614
Telephone: 773/ 325-7506

Miriam Bloom creates "biomorphic" sculptural forms -- "strange attractors." The pieces in "strange attractors," showing at DePaul University Art Gallery through November 17th, 1999, first meet the eye as amoebic, molecular, globular, tubular; echoes of quantum particles and curious protozoa; liquids solidified or microbes magnified. The forms are elemental and monochrome, although some display mottled or textured surfaces. These are sparse forms which harmonize well with the glass and metal open spaces of "International Style" architecture or a contemporary gallery: objects to come and see, rather than to live and spend time with. They are pleasant, sometimes amusing, and ofttimes "Pop" in expression. Although much more may be claimed for them, and one can, with imagination, no doubt find references to the immense cultural range cited as inspiration, the sculptures are what stand on display: where form is so reduced, context so diffuse, and inspiration so expansive, a viewer, here and now, can see anything in the art; or nothing. As painter Frank Stella said in 1966: "What you see is what you see."

The eight-page, illustrated exhibition catalogue offers a short essay by Joe Houston who writes: "Unlike the Japanese teacups and Greek vases upon which they are modeled, Bloom's vessels are wilted and assymmetrical. Animated by their imperfections, they invite us to identify with their living character and, conversely, to consider our own bodies as vessels, a theme that remains central to her work." Their first inspiration as vessels is indeed evident in most of the sixteen sculptures. "Strange Attractors" also includes a set of five drawings in pencil on Indonesian silk paper (all from 1996), and and untitled set of 13 small maquettes (1996) in red and white clay and Sculpty®. Houston notes that her first efforts were in papier-mache, but "strange attractors" also includes sculptures in porcelain (some polychromed), as well as several in terra cotta. And several of Bloom's pieces are of handmade paper over armature. Miriam Bloom began as a painter (the catalogue reproduces, in black and white, an untitled canvas of 1972), and received her BA from Brandeis University (1971), and an MA (1972) and MFA (1973) from the University of Iowa.

A dominant aspect of "strange attractors," the name not withstanding, is, as the catalogue notes, its "building on modernist traditions of biomorphic surrealism and lyrical abstraction...." In Miriam Bloom's sculptures the biological ranges from the actualistic to the wide manifestations of it in human culture -- from "Cycladic figurines, Cambodian statuary, Japanese anime and urban graffitti," to pop culture cartoons: a mix often of what Houston terms "Disney and Brancusi." To some, the sculptures on display at DePaul University Art Gallery/Chicago further evoke strong recollections of concepts in physics, topology and chemistry. The exhibition title, "strange attractors," even suggests analogies with the trait 'strangeness' (and 'taste,' and 'charm'), used in quantum mechanics, or the attractors of physics, a concept somewhat like bonds in chemistry. What should one make of the pieces? And what does one make of "strange attractors"? Which is to ask what is the artist's creative impulse; and what is the result?

One of the sculptures which has drawn the most attention is And How (1998). Justly so. It is fashioned from handmade paper over a wooden armature, but creates the distinct impression of mottled granite. This, and the manifest thematic melding of male and female attributes -- phallic and vaginal -- compose what could imaginatively be a hermaphrodite fetish of antiquity. As an object displayed, this artwork echoes and distils millennia of varied and disparate permutations of the motif. One recalls the Indian legend of the primogenial human, sundered into male and female, ever seeking to reunite as one; cult items of the ancient Fertile Crescent, Greek expressions of the theme; even some of Brancusi's toying explorations. Miriam Bloom turned to sculpture in the mid-1970s, drawing upon Japanese teacups and Greek vases for inspiration -- vessels. And she has sensed the equation of vessels and bodies, developing a biomorphic sculpture. This much is in evidence in her work. And in a piece such as And How, enigmatic but direct, it offers basic instinctual recognition and response, and viewers will bring to it wide and distinctly different associations. But it is the direct response to the sculpture which is paramount.

Brancusi's Prometheus (1911) or The New Born (1915), which "strange attractors" brings to mind, as Albert E. Elseon noted, were "object-like." In Origins of Modern Sculpture:Pioneers and Premises, Elsen protested that to call them objects: "is to deny all trace of humanity to his subject, which was surely not Brancusi's aim." In Bloom's And How and First Measure (1991), her creative impulse is akin to Brancusi's. If, as often said, Brancusi sought to bridge African and European sculpture, one clearly sees a resonance with fertility cults in And How, and perhaps a Pop resonance in First Measure. With such works, an immediate response allows for varied, but lucid associations. Interestingly, Elsen points out that when Brancusi "wanted to make pure objects, he made his Cups." [four between 1917 and 1921]. None of those vessels were hollow -- Brancusi denied their utility and, according to Elsen, the sculptor "tacitly proclaimed their purpose as contemplation."

In much contemporary art a distinction between artwork or object is often made. Brancusi, as noted, knew and played against the distinctions. For Brancusi, objects were playful, fun; and he played off against known, identifiable contexts, maintainng visual variety and interest. And art was experienced. Art required no theories, sources, explications. But again, its context and references were present, direct and manageable, even where much reduced to a visual or conceptual 'short-hand.' About this 'short-hand' in art, American artist Ben Shahn was explicit:

"...art symbols may be extreme simplifications, a sort of short-hand, still representing objects but now requiring an advanced ability on the part of the viewer to read or decipher. In progressive degrees, reference to objects may give way to the manner of representing them, to the look of the short-hand itself. Thus we complete the transition from representational art to completely nonobjective art. First the object with no short-hand, and last the short-hand with no object."

Ben Shahn, "Modern Evaluations" in The Shape of Content (Vintage: 1961)

Content and context -- Many of the works in "strange attractors" seem to vacillate between sculpture and objects presented as sculpture. Part of the puzzlement may lie in the wide and at times nebulous range of associations, and in the often "Pop" titles. When anything draws so wide an inspiration -- from Cycladic to Mickey Mouse to almost anything a viewer cares to suggest -- it must either transmit something primal and potent, something Dionysic, or shed all context and can only be experienced as an object. Much of Miriam Bloom's sculpture seems closer to a vague and general "Pop" context, in spirit and in actual forms. The Double (1990: 37"x13.5"x16") and Mood Swing (1995) bear this out. With the former, a porcelain totem of stacked spheres topped with "ears," Mickey Mouse, cartoon and comics animals do spring to mind. Likewise, in First Measure (1991), a "Kukla/carcass," Walt Kelly's Pogo... many such images stand foremost in response. It is an abstract "Pop Art" response. That First Measure is limbless (or perhaps just bound in a sheer straightjacket) elicits smiles. Many visitors enjoyed First Measure.

Where content does not or cannot bear the putative disparate contexts, the results seem mild, even indifferent. Neither extensive cultural investigations, nor documentations and commentaries can re-inspirit the art. And what it does achieve in its result eviscerates the inspirational source. Admired forms and images have histories and matrices which vitalize them. "Pop" allusion is playful. But much that is 'anthropological,' 'archeological,' or distant in culture, sensibility and context seems to demand greater transformation and development. It is not immediate to a modern, nor necessarily able to bring out response. It becomes problematic, whether it presents art, an object, or neither.

Robert Goldwater cautions against the assertion that "there is something called the aesthetic faculty, or the aesthetic reaction, which responds to works of art that are in every respect functional, as if a certain aspect of them were divorced from function." And further: "This tends to reduce the particular formal character of the functioning object to the level of decoration, which can be added or omitted at will without in any way affecting the nature or the mode of its function, that is, its representational, symbolic or magical role." He adds: "Art is a primary document in a culture, and as such cannot be explained out of the other elements of that culture any more than they can be explained by it." (Robert Goldwater, Primitivism in Modern Art, (Belknap Press of Harvard Un.: 1986)

The polychromed porcelain, Pick It (1994: 11"x19.5"x10.5"), is a case in point; as are Mood Swing (1995), and the handmade paper over armature, Consensual Delusion (1998:21"x29.5"x15.5"); or the five untitled drawings (1996). Seeing the sculptures and drawings together, in a understated gallery environment, and choreographed for deliberate, focused viewing -- as objects to be seen as 'high Art,' they are profoundly affecting; at least pleasing, even amusing. But while one may visit to view them, it can be asked if they can be lived with? They seem more suited to venues of transit -- lobbies, halls, the glass and metal corridors of the 'International Style' architects. For all the wide-ranging, venerable sources cited for their genesis, the final achievement is more akin to decorative 'conversation pieces.' There is not enough in the actual sculptures to bear the exegesis offered in the catalogue. That needn't be ill-thought: a Renoir or Hieronymous Bosch would be absurdly out of place hanging in a corporate Glashaus foyer. But, although some pieces rise to elicit response and engage viewers as fine art, many seem, at best, objects of curiousity. Brancusi's Cups were solid throughout. A number of pieces in "strange attractors" are empty.

The highlighting of disparate, often anthropological or biotypic allusions; claims for "psychological, sexual and physical poise" in the objects; for their "chaotic cosmos" as "a minefield of peril and pleasure" -- all these impose ponderous burden for the amusing, playful, often explicitly "Pop" pieces. It is not that the sculpture is not good, but that more is claimed for it than it can deliver. And, be it Minimalist Surrealism or NeoPrimitif Comique or Biomorphism, that rhetoric is not an encounter rare to art. Ben Shahn targets "the present tendency of art to borrow glory and to borrow value by a purely romantic self-association with scientific terminology." He continues: "And one can imagine how ill fares that kind of painting, devoted to capturing the moods of nature or to some idea of craftsmanship, in the hands of those critics who are schooled in the terminology of Biomorphism, or Geometric Expressionism, or who look upon art as compulsive or unconsciously motivated." In short, hyperbole, or over-justifications, are not necessary. "What you see is what you see." And what the viewer sees in "strange attractors" is pleasing, and well curated.

It should be noted that the curatorship is admirable. Sculptor Herbert George in a recent lecture at the University of Chicago's "Humanities Open House" commented that much sculpture is displayed like paintings, but at DePaul University Art Gallery curator Joe Houston has the three-dimensional pieces arrayed as to allow walk-around vantage points; and most of this work is positioned below eye-level, affording an overall view from above. It is the 13 maquettes and the drawings which follow the common mounting at eye-level. If one is near the Lincoln Park Campus of DePaul University, North Kenmore Avenue at Fullerton, "strange attractors" is worth a visit.

Miriam Bloom's "strange attractors" will be showing at the DePaul University Ar Gallery until November 17, 1999. There are some playful and puzzling sculptures and the eight-page catalogue is well-illustrated.

--G. Jurek Polanski

Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net.