Ray

細節

Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964)
Ray
signed and numbered 'Archipenko 2' (on the right side)
aluminum
Height (excluding base): 63¼ in. (160.6 cm.)
Height (including base): 90 1/8 in. (228.9 cm.)
Conceived in 1919; this aluminum version cast before 1958

來源

Acquired from the artist by the family of the present owner, 1958.

出版

A. Archipenko, Archipenko, Fifty Creative Years, 1908-1958, New York, 1960, no. 209 (another cast illustrated; titled Figure). D. Karshan, ed., Archipenko, International Visionary, Washington, D.C., 1969, p. 114, no. 35 (other casts illustrated, pp. 25 and 54, pl. 59; titled Ray and Vase Woman).
K.J. Michaelsen, Archipenko: A Study of the Early Works, 1908-1921, New York, 1977, no. S94 (related bronze cast illustrated).
D. Karshan, Archipenko, Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, 1908-1963, Danville, Kentucky, 1985, pp. 79-80, no. 35 (small variant illustrated, p. 88, nos. 35a-35b; titled Small Vase).

展覽

Caracas, Sala de Exposiciones Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, Expresionismo en Alemania, November-December 1959.
Caracas, Sala de Exposiciones Fundación Eugenio Mendoza, De Rodin a nuestros dias, October 1961.

拍品專文

Archipenko moved to Nice for the duration of World War I, and these years continued to be a productive time in his work. In 1918 Archipenko created Vase figure (from which the present work Ray is derived). It was highly innovative for its time; its elegant and elongated abstracted form clearly echoes the figure of a woman while taking its inspiration from a vase. Donald Karshan notes in his discussion of the related, smaller work Vase, 1918: "Vase is unprecedented for its time. It is not until Brancusi's Golden Bird of 1919 or his Bird in Space of 1923 that Brancusi reached such soaring, abstracted proportions. Vase also anticipates later surrealistic works of Max Ernst and Henry Moore and thus is a milestone in the vocabulary of modern sculpture for the early decades of this century. Archipenko conceived Vase and its variant Ray as a celebration of the human form" (op. cit., p. 79). These sentiments were echoed by Frederick S. White: "Ray has all the Archipenko virtues, and an overriding dignity achieved without the price of heaviness" (quoted in D. Karshan, 1985, op. cit., pp. 79 and 151).