Studio Visit with Bob Clyatt

I didn’t really think too many artists were doing purely figurative sculpture these days. Ever since Donatello and Michelangelo took the cake with their divine masterpieces, sculptors have tended to move towards more experimental and conceptual work, using the ideas and materials of their time to create their 3-dimensional stamps on the world. The likes of Larry Bell, James Turrell, Richard Serra, Dennis Oppenheim, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, among many others, changed our notion of what contemporary sculpture looks like, or at least of what contemporary sculptors are making.

Then I was introduced to Bob Clyatt. Although I was initially a little skeptical, my sentiment changed once I visited his Westchester studio. In particular, three works struck me as visually engaging. The first is a stack of ceramic glazed heads, piled one on top of the other resulting in a 4-foot totem pole. This piece will be installed at the Rye Town Park end of August. 



The second is a bust attached to a steal plate on wood. The steal is painted silver with vertical deep blue stripes. The accompanying sculpture bust is of a younger man with an oafish yet devious smile. He almost seems to be reacting to his present position, a painting-sculpture, fresh yet, in some ways, seems to be cheating the traditional art historical systems, teetering between two mediums and getting away with it.

The final piece is another wall sculpture of another male bust. This time, he is poking his head outside a cage. The race of the male is clear and its implications are even more obvious. The sculpture is an elegant rendering of our past and present history.


 

Bob Clyatt is also greatly influenced by the Butoh dance. Born in Japan, the dance looks more like a theatrical performance than it does bodily movements synced to harmonious music. Its founder,Tatsumi Hijikata, transformed the Japanese experience and culture into a shamanistic performance, with dancers moving in slow, calculated motions all the while in a state of controlled trance, their eyes rolled back and their minds focused on another realm. The slow movements often make the dancers appear to be frozen in time, their postures transforming their bodies into sculptures. Hijikata’s dance was initially called Ankoku Butoh, meaning dark dance. The darkness refers to taboo and forbidden places, the underprivileged and exploited, and memories of childhood. The movements involved in this dance emerge from inside a person’s psyche and memory, from the darkest corners of his or her experiences. The dance digs deep into a “wild land inhabited by elemental spirits, which the rational mind cannot reach.” Many of the facial expressions adopted by Butoh performers suggest the expressions of a mentally insane patient or an ugly child sticking her tongue out. Butoh has, “in the midst of a culture of exceptional visual harmony, employed a vocabulary of ugliness.” Clyatt, however, has taken these postures, and transferred them into another art form. However, his sculptures seem contrary to the distorted bodily positions employed by theButoh dancers. Instead they are delicately frozen in space, not in acontrapposto per se, but equally harmonious.

To view Butoh in action, visit http://tinyurl.com/2a8n8w5

For more information on Bob Clyatt, visit http://clyattsculpture.com/

+ simmy swinder