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JOHN VAN ALSTINE:
SCULPTURE BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD SPOT
by
David M. Gariff
The art of John Van Alstine is a highly personal amalgam of many
of the technical and aesthetic concerns that have shaped the recent
history of 20th-century sculpture. Combining the techniques
and materials of carved granite, cast bronze and welded steel,Van
Alstine's sculptural vocabulary reflects the improvisational aspects
of Abstract Expressionism, the elemental shapes of Minimalism, and
the concern with natural materials and processes of Post-Minimalism.
Beyond their formal properties,Van Alstine's sculptures also address
a wide array of themes relating to the sources of artistic creativity,
the labor and tools involved in making art, and the search for meaning
in abstract forms. An artist now in mid-careervan Alstine has produced
a large and distinguished body of work that warrants closer critical
examination not only for its formal beauty but also for its original
and inventive engagement with so many of the fundamental premises
of the sculptural art form. Indeed, taken as a whole, his
work addresses most of the issues that have obsessed sculptors past
and present. Among these concerns may be cited the respective
potentialities and limitations of carving, casting and construction;
the nature and language of materials; the physical laws that govern
sculpture; the use and importance of found objects; the continuing
debate between figuration and abstraction; and the unique ability
that three-dimensional forms have to activate space and to interact
with a viewer on both a physical and a psychic level. There is a
special excitement and accomplishment in the way thatvan Alstine's
sculptures explore formal contradiction and the opposition of forces:
gravity and weight work for a piece, not against it; natural and
man-made materials compliment each other and subvert our expectations
about their characteristics and behavior; refinement and rawness
coexist in a delicate yet forceful balance; a sense of both the
intimate and the monumental is implied and a reconciliation between
logic and subjective expression is always evident. This impressive
array of visual and physical tensions, of actual and implied formal
conflicts, lends an air of immediacy and poise tovan Alstine's work
that seems to hold the laws of nature in abeyance. The viewer
who chooses to engage the aesthetic dialogues that these works elicit
is always challenged and rarely disappointed. John Van Alstine received
his artistic education and training in American universities during
the 1970s. Contemporary American sculpture at that time was
undergoing a change from the cool surfaces, objectified forms and
personal detachment of Minimalism,typified by the works of Ronald
Bladen, Donald Judd andtony Smith,to the more process-oriented,
mutable and anti-formal vocabulary of Post-Minimalist artists like
Robert Smithson and Richard Serra. It comes as no surprise
thatvan Alstine's personal style is indebted, in part, to both of
these avenues of expression. He differs from the above-mentioned
artists, however, in his desire and ability to move beyond the exploration
of only those formal elements essential to the work of art itself,
to a more expansive and densely layered sculptural language.
In this regard, his method is less analytic and more synthetic than
one at first realizes.
Like many artists, Van Alstine tends to work in series, concentrating
on specific formal and thematic issues in each one before moving
on to the next. An inevitable carryover and cross-fertilization
occurs in his work as a result, allowing one to trace the emergence
and evolution of particular ideas throughout his entire oeuvre.
Early works like Torque 1 (1977), Prop III (1979) and Ballast 1
(1979) (from series bearing the same titles) explore the formal
problems related to gravity, balance, tension and compression.
The weight of stone is used in an active and positive way.
It becomes an asset, not a liability, allowing the component parts
of the sculpture to be held together without the use of welds, pins
or bolts. This formal principle remains a mainstay of the
artist's most recent work as well, where the precarious balance
between stone and steel is often maintained by forces that push
against each other much like the voussoir and keystone elements
in an arch. Other serial themes invan Alstine's art refer to vessels,
tools or implements, balance beams or scales, portals and passages,
and finally, a more Surrealist-inspired series called Strange Fruit
that brings together a diverse array of cast bronze objects rich
in poetic symbolism and metaphor. The variety of these themes
attests not only to Van Alstine's interest in formal problems in
sculpture, but also to his concern with more literary and symbolic
ideas. His use of Latin words and titles like incus (anvil) and
ara (altar) in VesseIV (Incus) (1988-89) and Ara (1989) immediately
suggests deeper levels of meaning. The anvil is a found object
(cast from life), a place of labor referring especially to the blacksmith
(and to David Smith?), a site where not only physical objects are
forged but creative ideas as well and, therefore, a kind of artistic
altar. Physical and poetic paradox often exist side by side in avan
Alstine sculpture. Sledge (1992), for example, conflates the
ideas of a sled and its load into one unified sculptural form.
The stone is both the bed of the vehicle and its cargo. Implications
for movement and whether the sledge is meant to be seen as empty
or loaded are just a few of the intriguing questions raised by the
work. Additional symbolism accrues when one recalls that the
historical function of a sledge relates to the American tradition
of clearing boulders from the land. They very often appeared
to be stone boats (vessels) skidding low over the ground.
Odatisque (1989), through its title, encourages us to recall the
pictorial and sculptural traditions of the reclining female nude
in lngres and Canova while it negates those same traditions through
its abstract formal language, materials and technical principles.
References to tools, to the hard work involved in being a sculptor
and to a sculptor's kinship with those who engage in physical labor
for a living are all leitmotifs inVanAistine's art. Real tools
are often incorporated into his works as in lmplementv (1992); bronze
casts of an anvil and a prong from a forklift appear in VesseIV
(incus) (1988-89) and Untitled (Stone with Stick) (1989) respectively;
and sculptures whose forms echo or refer to the shapes of tools
- Cudgel It (199 1), Upshot 11 (I 992) and Slider 1 (1992) - appear
with great frequency. Tools are seen as an extension of the
artist's hand, allies in his aspirations and symbols of his labors
and ultimate accomplishments. Such sentiments recall the values
and beliefs of past sculptors as varied as Michelangelo, Rodin and
David Smith. Van Alstine's Implement series is especially
relevant in form and close in spirit to sculptures from Smith's
Agricola series (195 1 52) composed, in part, of farm machinery
and tools. Smith also frequently used Latin and Greek words,
phrases and titles in his works.
Van Alstine often exploits the expressive potential of industrial
materials and found objects salvaged from the shipyards of NewYork
harbor and Jersey City where he once resided. Crimped Ibeams,
broken flanges, cut steel pipe, linkage from anchor chains and parts
taken from a winch or capstan have all been reborn and recontextualized
in his sculptures. Particularly distinctive objects in this
regard are often cast in bronze if possible and may very well appear
in more than one work. In recent yearsvan Alstine has been more
involved with large-scale outdoor public sculptures. The huge
Solstice Calendar (1986) installed on the campus of Austin College
in Sherman,Texas returns us to the primordial power of rough-hewn
granite blocks set upright in the earth like so many prehistoric
menhirs or dolmens. Standing over twenty-three feet high and
weighing over seventy tons, Solstice Calendar is a work of formal
simplicity, calendrical sophistication and totemic presence that
recalls aspects of Stonehenge in both its form and function.
A more relevant source of inspiration, however, is the artist's
long-standing fascination with the landscape and rock formations
of the American west especially in Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
Van Alstine has always believed in allowing the raw stone to speak
for itself. Evident in all his sculptures, large and small,
this "language of the stone" is among the most provocative
aspects of his art. He has moved away from the traditional
concept of carving as a refined manipulation of the chisel through
which a sculptor imposes his will on inert material,towards an approach
that thinks of each raw stone as a found object already possessing
formal integrity. Recognizing, selecting and roughly hewing
a stone in order to bring out its hidden potential as sculpture
is his personal variation on an ancient subtractive method.
The results are perhaps most apparent in his outdoor commissions
where the relationship of the stone to the quarry is easier to recreate
visually and where the "quarry graphics" (how the stone
has split and what its features reveal) are most obvious. Drawings
fulfill a variety of purposes in the art ofvan Alstine. They
clearly exist in a symbiotic relationship with his sculptures but
frequently change their character and nuances. Some are used
in problem solving while a sculptural project is underway.
Others investigate a specific detail or motif that may or may not
find its translation into three-dimensional form. Frequently
a finished sculpture serves as inspiration for a drawing, and even
more common is a free, improvisational drawing based loosely on
a sculptural model. In all cases, drawing is a source of pleasure
and immediate gratification for the artist. An increased sense
of energy and the exploration of coloristic effects are hallmarks
of his two-dimensional works. John Van Alstine is among the most
gifted sculptors of his generation. At a time when most, if
not all, of the basic premises of sculpture have either been called
into question or blatantly rejectedvan Alstine's art reasserts the
continuing relevance of a three-dimensional language predicated
on a clear set of formal principles and conceptual ideas. His vision reunites us with sculpture's origins at the same time
that it gives us a glimpse of its future possibilities.
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