Marisol @ Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts > January 21, 2024

Mary-Dailey Desmarais, chief curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, is discussing The Fishman, 1973. with us during the unveiling of the piece, see attached videos.

FRANÇAIS app de traduction à gauche

Marisol Escobar aka Marisol was of Venezuelan descent but born in Paris in 1930. With her wealthy family she travelled across Europe and America. She studied at many well known institutions in many exciting cities from Paris to Los Angeles to New York. She makes a name for herself during the growth of Pop Art in New York.

She befriends all the famous artists of that era notably, Andy Warhol who includes her in some of his videos.

Knowing this, I entered the exhibition. The detail I shared left is from a copybook. Interestingly, after all the art exhibitions I have seen over the years, I had never seen such a witty collage where she inserts her own face in the colourful characters. I knew at once I was going to adore this exhibition. 

Quickly I became aware that her works have a singular and rare quality, that of being filled with numinosity. She uses many materials to create portraits of people she knows, famous people or ordinary types. What distinguishes her representations is the soul oozing from the eyes of her subjects. This creates a paradoxical effect of making the heavy wooden sculptures appear weightless. To experience this, you must look into the eyes. 

I also determined that her work, although it flourished in the fertile soil of the New York Pop Art scene, transcends Pop Art. It is way more complex and not as superficial. To illustrate my point I chose to focus on one of the pieces you will see in this retrospective, The Fishman, 1973.

The room where the The Fishman, 1973. is situated is dazzling with a rich turquoise wall that make the sculpture come alive. Around it are videos and other ocean evoking sculptures. At first, my eyes had to get adjusted like after they are hit with a spotlight. But as everything settled, I began to see that the piece merges many influences. The small companion of The Fishman is very reminiscent of a detail from Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights , 1490-1500, oil on oak panel. Bosch's work was filled with deformed little creatures. The overall posture and design of The Fishman recalls classical Egyptian sculptures like Striding Figure from the Old Kingdom. This particular sculpture has the same design of the left leg moving forward depicted by thickness of the same. This thickness appears to play the role of motion lines in The Fishman. It is also reminiscent of those Egyptian sculptures illustrating deities where the human head is replaced by an animal head.

Marisol was a deeply religious person and the exhibition gave me a sense of her profundity which is extraordinarily rare in the art world. 

If you want all the technical details about Marisol's evolution in the arts and the retrospective, HERE

THE POP OF LIFE > March 24, 2024

Edmund Alleyn / Iceberg Blues, 1973-1975

As you circulate on the lower floors of the Museum, between the two major buildings, you will see many rarely exhibited art works from the Museum's collection. I love the freshness of Pop Art, its fearless use of form and colour. Among the artists showcased until December you will find Andy Warhol's Mao, 1972, Tom Wesselmann study for Mouth #10, 1967, and Pierre Ayot, Madame Blancheville Rides Again, 1974.

LENA GHIO   

Twitter  Facebook  Instagram   Pinterest  Paradox  

Photos + vidéos © LENA GHIO   2023