The Hudson Review.
A magazine of literature and the arts. Volumn 2, Summer 2006

Cronicles / Art /At The Galleries by Karen Wilken
David Smith retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum
Robert Taplin at Winston Wachter Gallery
Philip Grausman at Lohin-Geduld
Jake Berthot at Betty Cunningham
Madree MacPhee at Michael Steinberg Gallery
Jo Smail at Axis Gallery

Philip Grausman at Lohin-Geduld
It was evident from the sculptures and drawings on view at Lohin-Geduld Gallery that Philip Grausman shares Robert Taplin's faith in the expressive power of both the human image and modeled volumes. For the past three decades, he has concentrated on portrait heads, reveling in the tension between the universal, essentially abstract geometry that governs anatomy and the particulars that identify the individual.Grausman's heads are always of recognizable people with the irregularities of their physiognomies transformed into ideal ( but not idealized) formal relationships. Symmetry is emphasized and proportions subtly altered or exaggerated, as if in obedience to formal imperatives, but these changes, surprisingly, intensify the sense of individuality; the difference between a narrow jaw and a square one, between a rounded face and a tapering one, become immensely important, in both abstract and anecdotal terms.Grausman's mission seems to be to reveal the symmetrical geometric archetypes that lie beneath imperfect human forms, but his version of geometry is a curiously un -Platonic one; his archetypes are apparently more complex than ordinary, nameable, perfect solids or planes, even though his smooth modeling and the suave inflections with which he creates individuality and likeness clearly pay homage to the Graeco-Roman past. And, too, there's a playful quality to even Grausman's most solemn portraits, and echo of Elie Nadelman's fusion of folk art and classicism in Grausman's jaunty treatment of hair and his crisp profiles, without Nadelman's high style overtones.

Lohin-Geduld's intimate, elegantly stripped-down space never looked better than when it was dominated by Grausman's monumental Susanna (1996-1999), a ten foot high head in pristine white cast fiberglass, poised on a slender neck, as implacable and superhuman as an Archaic goddess - at least, when seen head-on. Seen in profile, Susanna teeters on the edge of abstraction, the masses of her simplified chignon and the swelling volumes of her cheeks balancing each other on either side of a columnar neck, calling up unexpected associations with Matisse's heads of Jeannette and Picasso's bulbous bronze portraits of Marie Thérese. The gallery's narrow rear space was transformed into a kind of domesticated Foro Italico, lined with a double row of (mostly recent) stainless steel portrait heads, mounted on tall cylindrical bases. Distinct personalities declared themselves at the same time that Grausman announced his presence through the simplifications of his characteristic forms. But the impeccable surface of the stainless, tugged at this sense of particularity; touch became irrelevant, erased by the smooth , continuous, light - responsive quality of the stainless, while the gentle modulations of the polished forms seemed more redolent of mechanical processes than of the hand. Grausman's combination of the exploitation of industrial materials and methods, combined to make the parade of heads compelling, a little puzzling, and hard to forget; perhaps this is how ancient Rome could be reinvented in a hypothetical future.