Exhibition notes.("Joel Shapiro on the Roof" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)(Critical Essay)

"Joel Shapiro on the Roof" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. May 1-October 31, 2001

"Joel Shapiro: Recent Sculpture and Drawings" at PaceWildenstein, New York. April 27-May 26, 2001

Much of the art of the twentieth century has attempted to reconcile the figurative and the abstract; Joel Shapiro is one of the few to do so in three dimensions. Atop the Metropolitan Museum, five of his spindly objects are on view throughout the summer, set against the verdant backdrop of Central Park and, beyond, the notched curtain of the city itself. This show marks the first time his sculpture has been situated high above the street, and it's appropriate became Shapiro sees his work not "as an extension of architecture but in healthy opposition." As he said in a recent interview, "I'm not interested in the floor, wall, or tabletop as a pattern, a template, as a basis of form ... the corollary of painting being limited by format is sculpture's acquiescence to any architecture." What he is interested in is the human figure.

One of the first works one sees upon stepping out onto the Met roof, Untitled (2000-01), is a life-sized figure, in cast aluminum painted blue, of a person walking, its long rectangular blocks serving as the torso and limbs. Balanced precariously on the right leg, with the left in the air high-stepping or marching, arms flung vigorously before and behind, the walker, with its teetering, motile energy, is a perfect example of Shapiro's sculptural work. The tallest work at the Met is twenty-four feet high--also cast in aluminum and painted, though red--but still relies on Shapiro's typical cantilevering to anchor its five limb-and-torso-like blocks: it looks like a gymnast poised on one arm, his legs and the other arm held above. The other three works in the show are cast in bronze, two of which have a similarly vertical organization, while the fifth, Untitled (1991), stretches out more horizontally.

Whether twenty-four feet or only inches high, recognizably figural or not, all of Shapiro's sculptures employ parts that are human in scale. He works by making small wooden models joined together with glue and metal pins, then, after arriving at the right form, casting a full-scale work. At PaceWildenstein's thorough and sightly exhibition, many small-sized works could be seen alongside the larger sculptures. Though cast in bronze, the small works retain the wood grain of the original models, admitting a glimpse of their genesis in the studio.

Angular and spare, Shapiro's sculpture has clear affinities with Constructivism, &spite the fact that he tends to use the more traditional medium of bronze. The highly designed graphic and abstract qualities one associates with Constructivism are evident, too, in the seven remarkable drawings on view at PaceWildenstein. Employing overlapping rectangular and square blocks of pastel and charcoal, the drawings seem almost a throwback to early modernist abstraction. Splashes, smudges, and stray marks enliven the white areas of paper, saving the hard-edged geometries of the rectangular blocks from overly graphic inertness. On paper, Shapiro can indulge his surprising facility with color, using the overlapping red, blue, black, brown, and pink shapes to suggest the shallow depths beneath the picture's literal plane as a compositional principle instead of the more human forms that organize the sculptures.

The sculptures at PaceWildenstein, though endlessly inventive and playful, were nevertheless all cast in bronze. Due to their colors, the drawings recalled the two painted aluminum sculptures on the Met roof. Shapiro has only recently begun painting his sculptural work. Adding color to his three-dimensional work certainly opens fecund new avenues for his sculptural enterprises, and one hopes he ...