John Storrs
See also: [Sculpture]
[Cubism]
Excellent biog link: -[TurnersCross.com]-
John Storrs
Stuff
As the author of the text on the Sculpture of the Sheldon
Memorial -[here]- (Valerie Cargbberry Gallery)
points out,
Storrs first visited Paris in 1906, beginning his
art studies. In 1912, he returne to continue those
pursuits, which in the interim had taken him to
various schools in the USA and Germany; the following
year he gegan studying with the influential Augste Rodin.
...
Ultimately, France became his expatriate home, and as
a result, Storr's radical abstractins of the late
1910's had later exerted little influence on his
contemporaries in the USA, where they remained largely
unknown until introduced in post-humous exhibitions in
the 1960's. [P. 31]
However, i might go out on a limb and say that the "geometrical
architecture" which he independently invented, is *probably*
built on the idea of the skyscrapers - which he would have
surely seen on his visits to the USA as well as the trend
which was at least "in the wind"; viz, Franz Kupka and of
course the Russian Construkivist schools, etc.
What i think most strikes me is not his use of the sky-scraper
form as such, but the inter-mixing of planes of COLOUR which
were hinted at by Malevich (who continued to study them in
the 2d world). These same "planes of cut colour" would surface
in the 1900c with the works of Ferdinand Leger, and of course
continuations of the cubist movement.
For me this is an important point: The surface of an object
(take a monolith or an obelesque) are just that to the sculptor
and/or drawer,etc. But, on such surfaces in our real world,
many things *live* on these surfaces. This re-kindles the
infinite circles within circles idea that what if our whole
galaxy is simply an atom in a much bigger universe. This idea
again struck home, when i learned of the necessity of removng
*etched* finger prints from polished metal surfaces in the
restoration of one of Storr's work -[SW or WW ref]
Images
Much more "in-the-round"and more maximal
than many of his simpler, minimalist works.
Whether "read" as portrait in the cubist fashion,
or as intersecting planes of built-up decomposition...
He (like Caulder) seemd that to suggest a fold in the
surface - one captured/released the space of the
di-hedral angles within (and i would add: without).
Chronology
Important Works
Joan of Arc
Walt Whitman