These days, art emphasizing subject matter often shunts form to the side, as if the visual analysis that form demands is irrelevant. With Therrien, it\u2019s essential. Students at L.A.\u2019s numerous celebrated art schools would benefit from spending time in the exhibition.<\/p>\n
This art\u2019s simultaneous appeal to the eye and the hand, formally lean and visually uncluttered, yields a strangely conceptual punch. A sense of charismatic presence \u2014 the material manifestation of an abstract idea \u2014 is inescapable.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Robert Therrien, \u201cNo title (red chapel relief),\u201d 1991, enamel on paper and wood<\/p>\n
(Christopher Knight \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Start with \u201cNo title (red chapel relief)\u201d from 1991. The simple contour of a chapel, its steeple slightly off-center, stands out from the wall about six inches deep. The simplified shape is the kind you might see on a Christmas card or a stamp.<\/p>\n
A bit over nine feet high, and hung more than a foot off the floor, the object suggests architectural scale without sacrificing an element of intimacy, which invites a viewer to engage in close examination. Up close, the bright crimson relief-sculpture is revealed to feature hand-brushed red enamel paint over paper.<\/p>\n
Visible most clearly in folds at the corners, the paper is carefully affixed to the surface of a wooden form. Step back, and suddenly the off-centered steeple rising from the boxy form below looks familiar in a very different way: Make a fist, raise your middle finger, and the off-centered contour of your hand repeats the shape hanging on the wall.<\/p>\n
The church seems to be giving you the finger back.<\/p>\n
The recognition of a sculpture surreptitiously flipping the bird certainly produces a smile. Soon, though, the wisecrack gives way to more sober ruminations. Every artist is expected to either shake off or renovate convention. Therrien\u2019s generic chapel stands not for any particular denomination or specific religious creed, but simply for the common reality of established doctrine operating throughout daily life. That\u2019s what gets the finger.<\/p>\n
Therrien isn\u2019t insulting religion. Raised Catholic but long-since lapsed, he instead harnesses an emphatic merger of physical form and fluid red color to conjure a wholly secular vision of the body and the blood.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Studies for Robert Therrien\u2019s sculptures are included in the Broad retrospective.<\/p>\n
(Christopher Knight \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Broad curator Ed Schad notes in his catalog essay that Therrien made 57 different chapels over more than three decades. He employed a wide range of materials in them \u2014 wood, bronze, steel, aluminum, brass, cardboard, paper, canvas, plastic, vellum, photogravure and wallboard. That\u2019s typical of the curiosity with which he investigated the visual appeal of art\u2019s physical potential, which he began in the mid-1970s by pouring resin into a puddle on an asphalt floor, letting it dry, then pulling up the pockmarked pancake and simply pinning it to the wall.<\/p>\n
Therrien\u2019s exploratory, artistic bird-flipping isn\u2019t parody, like German artist Anselm Kiefer\u2019s prickly self-portrait photographs<\/a> raising a Hitler salute in front of ruined landscapes. It\u2019s more like Chinese artist Ai Weiwei\u2019s \u201cStudy of Perspective<\/a>\u201d series of photographs, where his outstretched hand raises a middle finger aimed toward symbolic power centers \u2014 the White House, Tiananmen Square, the Eiffel Tower, the Reichstag, etc. Notably, however, Therrien\u2019s digital rumination on the hazards embedded within unquestioning cultures preceded his fellow artist\u2019s by more than a decade. The sensuous material breadth of his work also kept redundancy at bay, unlike Ai\u2019s ultimately repetitive photographic gestures.<\/p>\n The Broad has 18 Therrien works in its collection, while the Museum of Contemporary Art across the street has 17. The common denominator between them was the early enthusiasm of prolific Italian collectors Giuseppe and Giovanna Panza di Biumo, donors to MOCA and friends of Edythe and Eli Broad; they were also instrumental in introducing Therrien\u2019s work in Europe. Twenty-five of the exhibition\u2019s more than 120 works come from the two neighboring institutions, while the rest are loans gathered from the artist\u2019s estate and museum and private collections.<\/p>\n Upstairs in the Broad\u2019s permanent collection galleries is Therrien\u2019s 1994 \u201cUnder the Table,\u201d an Instagram favorite that\u2019s an almost exact replica of his studio\u2019s kitchen table, surrounded by six sturdy wooden chairs. The difference: All are enlarged so that the ensemble is nearly 10 feet tall and 26 feet long. Downstairs in the exhibition galleries is his related sculpture of a folding card-table and four metal chairs, rendered in not dissimilar Brobdingnagian proportions. You\u2019re invited to play underneath, like you\u2019re 6.<\/p>\n Robert Therrien, \u201cNo title (folding table and chairs, dark brown),\u201d 2007, mixed media<\/p>\n (Joshua White \/ The Broad)<\/p>\n These tables are not merely big. Instead, they are carefully calibrated to be large enough to allow a viewer to mentally return to childhood, when playing under a table where the grown-ups sat was a common kid thing, without being so large as to overwhelm a vaporous memory. Each viewer\u2019s recollection is summoned and given autonomy.<\/p>\n Weirdly \u2014 which is to say, in typical Therrien manner \u2014 the tables and chairs are not unlike those bird-flipping chapels. In both, a universalized norm gets displayed, yet it\u2019s simultaneously individualized. A chapel and a table are entirely different subjects, but the precision of the form propels the content of each.<\/p>\n That explains his art\u2019s titles \u2014 or, to be precise, his decision early on to affix each sculpture and painting with the words, \u201cNo title.\u201d The casual word \u201cuntitled\u201d was pretty common in art, but it possesses an air of disinterest that seems anathema in the vicinity of a Therrien. \u201cNo title\u201d carries the weight of a decision having been made. He doesn\u2019t want to get in your perception\u2019s way. It\u2019s followed by parentheses that hold plain descriptions \u2014 red chapel relief; oil can; or, folding table and chairs, dark brown.<\/p>\n The formal brilliance of Therrien\u2019s art is everywhere on view. He made exquisite, hand-rubbed wooden keystones, each representing the central stone at the summit of an arch. A keystone\u2019s angled downward pressure on each side locks the larger form in place, paradoxically allowing the arch to rise up.<\/p>\n Some of Therrien\u2019s keystones hang at eye level on the wall, inviting close perusal. Others stand upright on the floor, corresponding to your body. The sculptures lovingly sanctify a keystone\u2019s rational but enigmatic contradiction of mechanics and function.<\/p>\n Robert Therrien\u2019s beard sculptures recall the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.<\/p>\n (Joshua White \/ The Broad)<\/p>\n A nearly eight-foot stack of 26 enlarged white ceramic plates, which derive from dinnerware the artist found in a shop, stands as a mind-boggling pillar. Made from sleek ceramic epoxy over fiberglass, the stacked dishes are piled tilting this way and that. Walk around it, and the shifting, light-reflective and -absorbent white forms create an uncanny illusion of the pillar in jumpy, unstable motion. It\u2019s like stumbling into an old Max Fleischer cartoon that has come to life.<\/p>\n Perhaps the strangest sculptures in the show are a selection of flowing beards, symbol of maturity and wisdom, which derive from the long, lavish one the great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi sported. Born in the 19th century, Brancusi made his career in 20th century Paris, his work the epitome of Modernist abstraction. Therrien\u2019s beards \u2014 fashioned from synthetic hair, plaster, stainless steel or aluminum \u2014 hang on wardrobe stands from hooks that would go over the wearer\u2019s ears as part of a costume.<\/p>\n Some beards are big enough for a giant, befitting Brancusi\u2019s outsize artistic reputation. Others are doll-sized, perfect for a modern celebrity souvenir, like Barbie\u2019s Ken. Like ancient Egyptian pharaohs who wore false beards to signify their connection to Osiris, god of the underworld, or criminals wishing to alter their appearance to avoid the cops, we are challenged by sculptures representing the power of artifice.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is real is not the external form, but the essence of things,\u201d Brancusi famously said. So, ever the unconventional philosopher, Therrien made real false beards that embody the essence of that. Form and content, the visual and the physical, create art\u2019s spellbinding double helix. Think of these eccentric beards as Therrien\u2019s self-portraits.<\/p>\n “Robert Therrien: This Is a Story”<\/p>\n Where: <\/b>The Broad, 221 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When:<\/b> Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Closed Monday. Through April 5, 2026
Price: <\/b>$19 adults, $12 students, free for children; free Thursday evenings 5-8 p.m.
Info: <\/b>(213) 232-6200, www.thebroad.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A giant stack of dishes from the kitchen, a disembodied array of Daffy-like duckbills, an angry storm cloud…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":403473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[190770,1037,8067,40467,110444,1582,276,108296,9177,70911,2961,224,5337,146957,27537,190769,10074,197,624,8066],"class_list":{"0":"post-403472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-3d-sculpture","9":"tag-art","10":"tag-artist","11":"tag-beard","12":"tag-broad","13":"tag-ca","14":"tag-california","15":"tag-different-way","16":"tag-exhibition","17":"tag-floor","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-middle-finger","22":"tag-paper","23":"tag-robert-therrien","24":"tag-table","25":"tag-title","26":"tag-wall","27":"tag-work"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115610081964372087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}