The courtyard at the Fogg Art Museum is a reassuring place; just steps from busy Harvard Yard, it forms the light-filled center of this great repository of art from many eras and many geographies, a seemingly timeless spot (or, if not timeless, perhaps more closely related to other times than to our own). Beauty rules, and that makes this the perfect venue for " Christopher Wilmarth: Drawing into Sculpture, " which opens at the Fogg this Saturday with work by an iconoclastic and under-recognized contemporary artist.
Wilmarth, who committed suicide in 1987, at the age of 44, was best known for poetic glass and steel sculptures whose simplicity and formal grace belie the layers of expression and meaning that emerge from them. But it’s his " drawings " — a very broad term, in this artist’s case — that struck a deep chord with exhibition organizer Edward Saywell, a curatorial associate in the Fogg’s Drawings Department.
" The first time I came into contact with Wilmarth’s work, " Saywell explains, " was at the Nielsen Gallery on Newbury Street in April 1998, and the work just blew me away. The Fogg had recently bought a Wilmarth drawing, and we decided that we would focus on putting together a ‘study’ collection of his works, in part because the collection already has great strengths in sculptors’ drawings, and they come out quite a bit in teaching. " Because of its educational mission, the Fogg acquires new work with teaching in mind: " Although we try to ensure that we have works by all of the important artists through the ages, we also try to be sure that we have things that we know will get used in classes, and that sometimes leads us down unusual paths. "
In this case, it led Saywell and Fogg curator of drawings William Robinson to contact Wilmarth’s widow, Susan Wilmarth-Rabineau, who not only made important drawings available to the Fogg but also donated extensive archival material to the museum, including 40 sketchbooks, files on virtually every work Wilmarth ever created, paper maquettes of his sculpture, hundreds of his technical specification sheets, correspondence, and childhood drawings. It was the first time the Fogg had approached an artist’s estate for archival material, and the result reveals a side of this artist that had not been seen. " Christopher Wilmarth: Drawing into Sculpture " will comprise 58 works; they range from early student drawings made in 1963 from a viewing platform at the Queensboro Bridge (these show his early preoccupation with light and his grasp of " reflection " as both a physical event and an emotional state) to his experimental works using thick sheets of sea-green glass as a material to be " drawn " on with graphite as well as with rope and steel cable. It all culminates in the late drawings that respond to the Symbolist poetry of Stéphane Mallarmé. Wilmarth’s work is intensely physical — built up in layer upon layer of paper or glass, cut into, etched, folded, and stapled — but also deeply personal.
ALSO: I’ll make this short and sweet: plan on going to the annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art, which is organized by MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, this Saturday at 2 p.m. This year’s racy theme is " Post-Revolutionary Sex and the Future of Visual Desire, " and the proceedings are moderated by Artforum hottie Bruce Hainley, with panelists/artists Larry Clark, Glenn Ligon, Claude Wampler, and Sturtevant there to talk about pushing the boundaries of eroticism and taste, and to explore the future of sex in art now that HBO has worked so hard to co-opt the topic.
" Christopher Wilmarth: Drawing into Sculpture " is at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum, 32 Quincy Street in Harvard Square, from April 5 through June 29, with a free gallery talk by exhibition organizer Edward Saywell on April 6 at 2 p.m. Call (617) 495-4544. " Post-Revolutionary Sex and the Future of Visual Desire " will take place in MIT’s Auditorium 10-250, 77 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, on April 5 at 2 p.m. Call (617) 253-4680.
