Swimmers

swimmers carole feuerman

swimmers

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swimmers carole feuerman foreword by John T. Spike

Essay by John Yau

The Artist Book Foundation NEW YORK

LONDON

HONG KONG

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contents artist’s statement “my subjects are swimmers. my medium is water.” 13

foreword “golden mean divina proporzione” by John T. Spike 17

“states of ecstasy and self-realization” by John Yau 21 sculpture Painted 32 Bronze 56 Monumental 68 Video Installation 82 works on paper Prints 94 Drawings 118 acknowledgements 123 chronology 125 selected solo and group exhibitions 131 selected private, public, and corporate collections 136 selected honors, awards, and memberships 137 selected media: videos and tv appearances 138 bibliography 139 photograph credits 144

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Golden Mean Divina Proporzione

by John T. Spike

Carole Feuerman’s Golden Mean Divina Proporzione (2013) is a 14-foot stainless steel and epoxy patina sculpture dedicated to Venice, the only city that combines Renaissance art, science, and the sea. An avid fan of the Olympics, Feuerman was inspired by and studied the shapes created by swimmers’ bodies as they dove off the high platform, often from handstands. The parabola the body makes for only a moment resonated in her memory.

Golden Mean Divina Proporzione is based on Feuerman’s 14-foot bronze The Golden Mean of 2013, which is on permanent exhibition in Riverfront Green Park overlooking the mighty Hudson River in Peekskill, New York.

The golden mean is a beautifully simple piece of mathematics apparently discovered

by Pythagoras of Samos and first written down three centuries later in Euclid’s Elements.

Euclid called it “extreme and mean proportion.” The golden mean is a ratio between two unequal parts of a quantity, roughly 1:1.6, which means that the smaller part is to the larger part as the larger part is to the whole. This ratio yields an irrational number with infinite decimal places, 1.618… (Phi). The golden ratio is integral to the configuration of pentagrams, sacred to Pythagoras, and other geometric forms, including the parabola.

In 1509 in Venice, mathematician Fra Luca Pacioli published his treatise De divina proportione, with drawings of polyhedra by Leonardo da Vinci. Pacioli called the golden

The Golden Mean, 2013 (detail).

Bronze and 24-karat gold leaf, 150 x 54 x 38 inches (381 x 137.2 x 96.5 cm).

Edition of 3. Collection of the City of Peekskill, NY.

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States of Ecstasy and Self-Realization

by John Yau

Carole A. Feuerman is a realist sculptor working in materials ranging from marble and bronze to vinyl and painted resins. Whether she is using ancient processes and materials or contemporary ones, her subject matter is the human figure, most often a woman in an introspective moment of exuberant self-consciousness shaded by erotic lassitude. Her exuberance is partially the result of rather ordinary circumstances; she has just stepped from the shower or is resting on an inner tube in a swimming pool.

From an art historical perspective, Feuerman is one of a small number of postwar sculptors who successfully rejected Minimalism in favor of the human figure. These sculptors faced a daunting challenge, which was how to make a freestanding sculpture of the human figure that didn’t appear nostalgic, and that didn’t look back to the heroic work of Auguste Rodin. The challenge is clear enough: how do you keep the figure intact without being wistful for that moment before Impressionism dissolved forms and Cubism shattered the world?

At the same time, Feuerman shares something with the Impressionists and Post– Impressionists, who depicted leisure as one of their primary subjects. In Edouard Manet’s painting Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil (1874), the viewer sees a woman and child standing on the riverbank. A few sailboats are visible in the river, waiting. The boats’ primary function is to provide pleasure, a subject that Claude Monet, Pierre Renoir, and Georges Seurat also explored in their work.

Moran, 2008 (detail).

Oil on resin, 26 x 18 x 8 inches (66 x 45.7 x 20.3 cm).

Private collection of Rudolf Gutlich, Lucca, Italy.

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Among contemporary postwar sculptors, Feuerman has affinities with John de Andrea, Duane Hanson, Marisol, Mary Frank, and George Segal, other figural sculptors who thrived in the face of the challenge to make work that took the human figure as the primary subject. The significant difference between Feuerman’s lifelike sculptures and those made by the sculptors just mentioned is twofold. First, her subjects are caught in a moment of transition that radiates an intense eroticism. Second, her figures seem capable of thought.

They evoke an inward life, which invites the viewer’s speculation as well as signals the distance between them and us. We can never know what they might be thinking. And that perhaps is the point.

Feuerman makes this state of seeing and not-knowing all the more complex by directing our attention to a moment that is both familiar and highly charged. In her work, the ordinary and elemental become extraordinary and intensified. In In Paradiso (75 x 21 x 21 inches, oil-painted resins, 1985), a woman who has just stepped out of the shower is tying a bath towel around her hair. Her hands are above her head, which is tilted back, her eyes are closed, her back is arched, and droplets of water cascade down her skin. She is immersed in a reflective state of intense ecstasy.

Water droplets are also prominent in Inner Tube (17 x 32 x 15 inches, oil-painted resins, 1984), Sunburn (38 x 17 x 13 inches, oil-painted resins, 1984), Snorkel (29 x 25 x 111/2 inches. oil-

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Edouard Manet, Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil, 1874.

Oil on canvas, 247/8 x 401/2 inches (63.2 x 103 cm).

Private collection, on extended loan to The Courtauld Gallery, London.

opposite

In Paradiso, 1985.

Oil on resin, 75 x 21 x 21 inches (190.5 x 53.3 x 53.3 cm).

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.

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Balance, 2012.

Oil on resin, 36 x 32 x 18 inches (91.4 x 81.3 x 45.7 cm).

Private collection of Lois Robbins and Andrew Zaro, New York, NY.

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Moran, 2008.

Oil on resin, 26 x 18 x 8 inches (66 x 45.7 x 20.3 cm).

Private collection of Richard Cohen, New York, NY.

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Capri, 2013.

Oil, resin, and Swarovski crystals, 30 x 20 x 11 inches (76.2 x 50.8 x 27.9 cm).

Private collection of Adi and Ami Lidor, Tel Aviv, Israel.

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Christina, 2013.

Bronze, 72 x 19 x 131/2 inches (182.9 x 48.3 x 34.3 cm).

Edition of 6. Collection of the artist.

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Double Diver, 2012–2014. (detail and inside flap) Bronze, 312 x 44 x 42 inches (792.5 x 111.8 x 106.7 cm).

Unique. Dedicated by NetApp to the Collection of the City of Sunnyvale, CA.

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works on paper 43

Serena Print Suite, 2012.

Archival giclĂŠe with silkscreen, 331/2 x 24 inches (85.1 x 61 cm).

Edition of 30.

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sremmiws 48