Review: Charles Ray: Figure Ground @ the Met
Like olives or sardines, sculpture is an acquired taste
In 1846, the poet Charles Baudelaire excoriated the art of sculpture, calling it “Crude and direct,” yet “nevertheless vague and elusive owing to the many sides that can be seen at the same time.” He went on to say that with a painting, the viewer has but one way to look; whereas with a sculpture, owing to its 360 degrees of material, the onus is on the spectator to find a pleasing angle, which might not occur due to the way shadow and light can distort its beauty. “A painting is not whatever one would like it to be,” he concludes.
This argument is tempting. There is something elusive about sculpture, a medium that should be the most accessible because, when it deals in figuration, it is closest to the beating pulse of life. However, the Judds and Smithsons of the world, with their talk of space and entropy (whatever that is) have made the form difficult to say the least. Like olives or sardines, sculpture is an acquired taste to which many will turn their noses up. Can you blame them? I can’t.
In his gnomic interview with the Brooklyn Rail, Charles Ray—whose show Figure Ground ended its run at the Met this weekend—suggests, “Sculpture is a behavior rather than a practice” and is “the ultimate result of my behavior.” With this he seems to be echoing the artist whom he is often compared to, Bruce Nauman, who himself said, “if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art.” Anyway, I see a throughline in their thinking.
The presentation, one of many occurring simultaneously (or having just occurred) at four museums across the world, is a mini-retrospective of Ray, an artist who at 69-years-old is, according to Art in America not having a moment but, “a near apotheosis.” Ray, born in Chicago, Los Angeles-based, is a product of the America that his five-decade career interrogates with both subtly and compassion. His contemporaries—Paul McCarthy, Matthew Barney, Robert Gober and Cindy Sherman—all of whom featured alongside Ray in Jeffrey Deitch’s landmark 1992 group show Post Human, have larger legacies than he. This moment, Charles Ray’s moment, might solidify his standing in the canon. It’s hard to gauge these things, though. On the penultimate day of the exhibit, when I visited the Met, the two rooms in which his works were featured were relatively empty. Then again, the Cindy Sherman show at Hauser & Wirth’s upper Manhattan location wasn’t teeming with visitors either. Perhaps, that’s apples and oranges, one being a gallery and the other a veritable institution, but I think history will be with me when I say positively for the record that I think Ray, whose work crackles with a sense of sardonic humor, will be receiving renewed attention at the auction house, if that is indeed how success is to be measured for an artist.
But enough prognosticating, let’s get to the show itself. Spare, with 19 works on display, three of which are photographs, what is exhibited is diverse. (The whole of the artist’s oeuvre is composed of around 100 extant works; during the 10-year period of 1995 - 2005, he completed only four sculptures, though he’s since ramped-up production having produced 38 works between 2010 and 2021.) Prior to visiting the museum, I had only ever seen these sculptures in books and magazines. Beholding them in person was a surprise owing to their massive scale and clean, immaculate craftsmanship. Some, that is, are massive. Ray plays with size to change the message of the work. Boy with Frog (2009), for instance, is eight feet tall, much larger than your average boy, even if he eats his Wheaties, while Family romance (1993) depicts a nuclear family: heterosexual parents and their two children, hands clasped, nude, all the same height of four-feet five-inches, the proportions of your average eight-year-old. The effect is to unnerve— the family, on the surface, is normal, yet far from it, too. Like much that Ray does, there’s a psychological undercurrent that creeps up and shocks you like a poorly buried electrical wire.
Boy with Frog, painted stainless steel, was commissioned by French mogul Fraçois Pinault, one of his two main collectors, the other being the billionaire couple Mitchell and Emily Rales, founders of the Glenstone museum in Potomac, Maryland where one of the concurrent shows runs until December. A typical Ray work asks the viewer to contemplate relationships, be it the relationship between an adult slave and a free boy, as in the Huckleberry Finn and Jim pieces, or the relationship between the object and us, as in the dilapidated tractor (2005’s Tractor). In Boy with Frog, the boy, nude, dangles a frog from only one of its four appendages, an act of cruelty or curiosity (?), it’s up to you. Either way, power dynamics form a perennial motif throughout Ray’s slippery, sly work.
The show opens with a photograph of Ray, which at first glance appears to be a self-portrait. On further inspection, the work, titled No (1992), is a piece of verisimilitude, a term that pops up again and again in the articles I read about Ray to prepare my own. In fact, the photo is not of Ray, but of a fiberglass mold of Ray’s head and torso. A wig and the artist’s own Coke-bottle glasses and clothing are affixed to this constructed imposter. It’s a prank that properly sets the stage for the Dadaist elements of Ray’s most intriguing works. Worth noting is that while Ray the artist is given to lighthearted gags, Charles Ray: Figure Ground presents the work with steely decorum.
There is a broad assortment of styles seen in this show, which range from a Post-Minimalist square box, recreated ready-mades, photos of student-era performance art, and a wide array of sculptures, with and without a base, of varying materials (“Ray’s works may be cast in fiberglass, steel, aluminum, bronze, porcelain, plaster, cement, or paper; carved in wood or stone; or digitally milled from blocks of stainless steel, aluminum, or sterling silver,” according to Art in America.)
What’s most successful are his figurative works, the best of which are described above, but also include Boy (1992), Huck and Jim (2014), and Sarah Williams (2021). The dates prove that Ray is consistent throughout the back half of his career. Another piece that works well, which you might miss if you don’t look closely enough, is 1988’s Rotating circle, which first appeared at the Whitney Biennial. The circle, carved into the wall and painted white to camouflage it within the white space, is set to the artist’s height and spins so quickly that you don’t register it as moving. It’s a creative self-portrait that recalls the artist’s hermetic and furiously spinning mind.
What doesn’t work as much, at least for me, is Table (1990) and 81 x 83 x 85 = 86 x 83 x 85 (1989). Each is conceptual, relying on space, which Ray calls, “the sculptor’s primary medium.” While not a sculptor myself, I am hard-pressed to refute this maxim; however, the fun of other pieces on display is absent from these formal, stodgy works. As Fairfold Porter once wrote, “It requires much more imagination to be a sculptor than to be a painter. And because a sculptor’s activity is consequently more serious, a sense of humor is more necessary to him than to a painter.”
Ultimately, the show is a modern look at sculpture that is a real treat to attend. If sculpture isn’t your bag, Ray can amend that. His works challenge, but are accessible. Porter called sculpture “the most “thingish” of the arts.” The entree fee for understanding is relatively low. All you have to do is look and you’ll see that Ray is a master at what he does. And what he does is create sculptures that are asking to be engaged with.
Verdict: **** 1/2 / *****