The Human Proportion: when sculpture wanted to end the canon

Until well into the 20th century the sculpture was anthropomorphic: in addition to sacred animals and sculptures or reliefs with ornamental or symbolic motifs, he represented human beings and did so according to a canon that varied according to culture and time. Egyptian bodies measured eighteen fists, those of Polyclitus and Phidias seven heads and a third, those of Praxiteles eight and those of Dürer nine; Leonardo inscribed the “Vitruvian man” in a circle and Le Corbusier formulated “El Modulor” — six feet high —, based like the Leonardesque canon on the Golden Section, which we know since the Renaissance Luca Pacioli as the Divine Proportion, guarantee of beauty and harmony.

This necessary exhibition, curated by Penelope Curtis (former director of Tate Modern and the Gulbenkian Museum) with Manuel Fontan del Junco It is Ines Vallejoexplains how after the Second World War it was no longer a question of creating statues according to a canon, but of converting measurement systems —mathematical, geometric, geographic and even temporal— into a defining theme or tool of sculpture, but still with the human body as the ultimate reference. He confronts us with scale as a sculptural principle.

And it does so not only in the form of a historical journey: the mounting of an exhibition of more than one hundred pieces, in a small room like this, forces us to do without the distances that would be desirable to “measure ourselves” properly with the works, not so much on the walls as on the plinths or tables where very disparate pieces have accumulated. This causes interference that makes us precisely more aware of the spatial correlations we are being told about.

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But we make up for it with the works installed in great relief in the adjacent garden of Banca March, “occupied” for the first time by an exhibition, and which remind us how happy it can be the presence of outdoor art. In addition, a sound tour was designed nearby that resembles the musical scale.

Inside, the order is not chronological, but raises some of the most significant aspects of the scale, although it begins with works by pioneers such as david smith, Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti. when it is complete shock After the war, the monument stopped making sense, some artists needed to delimit their emotional space, and a figure emerged —changing but reiterated— that expressed the idea of refuge: the box, the cage, the enclosure, the doll's house.

This necessary exhibition explains how, after the Second World War, it is no longer a question of creating statues according to a canon

fausto melotti, Carol VisserLouise Bourgeois, Juan Munoz, Lili Dujourie or Francisco Tropa configure small closets that metaphorically house mental and creative life. Of particular interest are the works that are inspired by the system of reproduction or enlargement with cage and dots, which affect the importance of measurement for form.

This first section, the most subjective, is followed by a catalog of speculative measurement exercises in the 1960s and 1970s. Starting from Duchamp's “standard stops”, we examine Pistoletto's “cubic meter of infinity”, the “imperial system " in Bill Woodrow or, in filmmaking and photography, thus expanding sculptural practice into foreign media, the standardized movements of Charles and Ray Eames (in powers of 10, from the cosmic to the microscopic) and John Hilliard (in steps, when walking).

Below is a broad sample of constructions by addition of units, progressions and permutations, and the cube as driving motive. Hans Haacke, by KirkebySol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Cildo Meireles, Felix Gonzalez-Torres or Fiona Banner stand out in this section, which leads to another in proportion. Architectural scale becomes the dominant theme here and acquires a critical tone in the works of Dan Graham, Thomas Schütte, Martin Honert any Chris Burden.

As a connection to the outside, the models of the large sculptures that surround the building (Chillida, Sempere, turner, churches…) and, in the garden, the 1:4 scale reproduction of works that participated in the Skulptur Projekte Münster between 1977 and 2007, by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and the Mini enlarged to 130 are particularly suitable to the exhibition’s argument. % per Elizabeth Wright. The mechanisms of perception are highlighted in this area: our individual perception. After all, as Protagoras would say, “man is the measure of all things”.

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