448
PARTISAN REVIEW
larger works without reverting to the wiriness that sometimes plagued him,
he will be making the best sculpture of his life.
Both Isaac Witkin and Michael Steiner have also changed their ways of
working quite dramatically in the past several years. Steiner, who had spent
about a decade working in bronze, constructing sinewy "cages" and complex
arrangements of slung forms that suggested both architectural vaulting and
reclining figures, began to work in steel. Witkin, who was an accomplished
steel sculptor, known for shambling planar structures that progressed from
event to event, began casting in bronze. Steiner, after years of working with
sheets and slabs of wax, seemed to delight in the crispness and firmness of
steel, while Witkin, who was capable of putting steel through some pretty
complicated paces, reveled in bronze's unpredictability, its ability to flow. The
two sculptors' exhibitions this spring made it clear that each has come
to
terms with his new medium.
Witkin's recent bronzes, shown by Patricia Hamilton at 112 Greene
Street Gallery in May, were provoked by a version of the legend of the
wizard, Merlin, who is supposed, at the end of his life, to have returned his
knowledge to nature, in the person of a delicious nymph. Not that you need
to know this. Witkin's generous, gently swelling forms, piled into pyramids,
stretched upwards or delicately interlocked, evoke growth and the natural
world quite independently. They evoke, too, a kind of crustacean 1940s
biomorphism I associate with certain works by David Smith (among others),
notably the Specters and the occasional cast piece. Witkin's spiky organic
forms seem slightly
retarditaire,
which may be part of their charm. There's
also something curious about seeing vast dollops of metal, their shapes clearly
determined by a molten state, prancing effortlessly in space. The series is
clearly a
tour de force
and, at the same time, a little uncomfortable, which
may, like the retro quality, be part of the point. I liked
Hawthorne Tree II
best, with its poised and cantilevered forms rearing up playfully, but I pre–
ferred to any of the large, ambitious pieces two slightly earlier works to–
wards the back of the gallery, built of subtly inflected , narrow "leaves" of
metal that seemed to drift spontaneously into position. The more open of the
two, like a momentary joining of elements, may have been the best piece in
the show.
In
general, though, all the works in the exhibition, with their clear
profiles and beautifully modulated patinas, seemed to me Witkin's most fo–
cused and concentrated to date.
Michael Steiner's initial steel sculptures, while possessed of the clear–
headedness and lucidity that characterize his work, whatever the medium,
were less personal than the bronzes that had preceded them. His most recent
work, shown at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries in May, are, to my eye, the first
of his steel pieces to equal the inventiveness of what came before. Yes, I
