STAR SEARCH

From skyscraping sculpture to works on paper, Nasher Sculpture Center’s homage to Mark di Suvero reaches new heights.

BY STEVE CARTER

It’s rub-your-eyes hard to believe that the Nasher Sculpture Center is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. What? Where did the time go? But here it is, and 20 years into its celebrated existence the Nasher is presenting Mark di Suvero: Steel Like Paper, a blockbuster survey of the internationally acclaimed American artist’s 3D and 2D works that also lifts the curtain on his studio practice. The exhibition is especially appropriate for the Nasher’s anniversary, since Raymond and Patsy Nasher enjoyed a decades-long friendship with Mark di Suvero, and his For W. B. Yeats and Eviva Amore are two signature works of the Nasher Sculpture Garden.

Raymond and Patsy first met di Suvero at his Petaluma, California, studio in 1976, and they fell in love with and acquired In the Bushes, a large-scale, gravity-defying painted steel I-beam piece. “That was an important first work, and that was really the beginning of their friendship with Mark di Suvero,” explains Jed Morse, Nasher Sculpture Center’s chief curator and organizer of the exhibition. “The Nashers would go on to buy other really important works for the next several decades—they bought his For W. B. Yeats in 1988 and then the really big sculpture in the garden here, Eviva Amore, in 2001.”

Steel Like Paper is an impressive coup for the Nasher— significant not only as the largest US museum survey of di

Suvero’s work since 1975, but also the first examination of his studio practice by any major museum. Running through August 27, the exhibition features 30 sculptures in a variety of scales, from the monumental down to the handheld, plus more than 40 drawings and paintings that are a seldom-seen aspect of 89-year-old di Suvero’s prodigious oeuvre. Di Suvero’s pioneering large-scale abstract expressionist steel sculptures are unforgettable—there’s an effortless majesty about them as they prowl their landscapes, communicating through an arcane semaphore uniquely their own. But because he’s best known for his monumental public works, seen all over the world, di Suvero’s smaller-scale sculptures and 2D works will be a revelation to many. “There are over 100 works that are cited in public locations around the world,” Morse continues, “but the smaller scale things aren’t usually seen in greater numbers because they may be included in gallery exhibitions where there’s limited space. And the drawings and paintings are rarely shown in gallery exhibitions,” says Morse. Acrylic on linen, ink on paper, marker on paper, acrylic on paper, and more, di Suvero’s 2D works are a secret window on his creative world.

The exhibition’s enigmatic subtitle, Steel Like Paper, is an intriguing paradox, an almost-koan that dates back to a 2003 video interview di Suvero did with the Nasher Sculpture Center on the occasion of its opening. Morse recalls, “The installation of Eviva Amore took place while the building was still being built, and in the interview he talks about plates of steel arriving from the mill and how for him they’re like sheets of white paper: “…you can do anything with it, make anything from it, draw anything you want, it’s just a tabula rasa…” In all of di Suvero’s works there’s an elevating, glorious sense of the absolute and intrinsic, even when the title of a piece seems to suggest a programmatic association. Playful, exploratory what-if riffing is an essential North Star of the artist’s program, a visual jazz that takes viewers on a journey to places they’ve never seen before. Whether drawing, painting, or sculpting, di Suvero’s process is largely improvisatorial, according to Morse. “He’ll often do drawings to try and capture a flash of inspiration. It’s interesting—the drawings aren’t blueprints for sculpture, they’re much more energetic and dynamic and expressive of an energy, essentially. He’s said he always felt that if he could capture the energy of an idea in a drawing, he’d be able to do the same in sculpture. The paintings are fascinating because they’re really beautifully colored abstracts that are as much about an experience of space in two dimension as they are about the expressive potential of color. And it’s that spatial quality in the paintings that connects them very closely to the sculptures.”

Another cause for celebration is that the exhibition marks the first presentation of 10 di Suvero works that were recently given to the Nasher by the artist’s friend Lisa Schachner, a former curator at Gemini G.E.L. Five small sculptures, four drawings, and a screen print comprise the gift, along with some artist ephemera. “The works that Lisa donated to us helped fill in the breadth of the artist’s work—they span four or five of his six-decade career,” Morse says. “They also really underline this kind of notion of movement and play that runs throughout his work. There’s this sense that they’re like playthings, and I think playing is an important part of discovery, not only for children but also for adults.” A lifelong social activist and unflaggingly egalitarian by nature, di Suvero has always championed public sculpture, and many of his earliest large-scale works were playground sculptures; one such piece included in the exhibition is the irresistibly inviting Love Makes the World Go Round, (1962–63). “He’s always viewed the work of art as it being for the public,” Morse observes. “He’s not making it for himself; he’s making it for other people to enjoy.

“This is a really unique opportunity to see the full range of

Mark di Suvero’s work,” Morse continues, “and that’s why we say that this is really the first exhibition to focus on his studio practice, because his studio practice encompasses it all—you rarely get to see all of that in one place.” The exhibition is a realtime tribute to the spirit of di Suvero, who is still actively working at his studios in Long Island City, New York, and Petaluma as he approaches year 90. “We should all aspire to Mark’s longevity and determination,” Morse adds in summation. “I think the sense of joy of life comes through in his work very strongly, and it must be part of his incredible longevity.” P