Arlene Shechet (born 1951) is an American artist known for her inventive approach to sculpture.Cotter, Holland ''The New York Times'', July 19, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Ollman, Leah ''Los Angeles Times'', April 29, 2019. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Rapaport, Brooke Kamin "Body-To-Body Experience," ''Sculpture Magazine'', June 2016, p. 30–35. Retrieved September 26, 2023. Her work is often described as polymorphous, combining materials, styles and finishes in unconventional ways.Murtha, Chris "Arlene Shechet," ''Artforum'', October 28, 2016. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Micchelli, Thomas "Parallel Strains: Arlene Shechet's Ceramic Abstractions," ''Hyperallergic'', October 19, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Smith, Roberta ''The New York Times'', November 8, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2023. Of particular note is her extensive use of fired clay as a sculptural medium, as porcelain and ceramic have a long history of exclusion in contemporary art due to their association with practical and decorative objects.Loos, Ted ''The New York Times'', September 23, 2018. Retrieved September 26, 2023.
Shechet has received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
,
Anonymous Was A Woman Award
The Anonymous Was A Woman Award is a grant program for women artists who are over 40 years of age, in part to counter sexism in the art world. It began in 1996 in direct response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to stop funding in ...
and
Joan Mitchell Foundation
Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...
grant, among other recognition.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Arlene Shechet Fellows. Retrieved September 25, 2023.Anonymous Was A Woman Award Recipients Retrieved September 25, 2023.Joan Mitchell Foundation Arlene Shechet Fellows. Retrieved September 25, 2023. Her work belongs to the public collections of museums including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
,Centre Pompidou Arlene Shechet Artists. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...
Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...
Whitney Museum of American Art Arlene Shechet Artists. Retrieved September 25, 2023. and
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
.National Gallery of Art Arlene Shechet, ''Twin Rockers'', 2007 Collection. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
She lives and works in New York City and the nearby
Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to ...
.''Art 21'' Arlene Shechet Artists. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
Life and career
Shechet was born in 1951 in New York City. She earned a BA from
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
and an MFA from
Rhode Island School of Design
The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...
(RISD) in 1978. After graduating, she taught at RISD from 1978 to 1985 and at
Parsons School of Design
Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...
from 1984 to 1995.''Ceramics Now'' "Arlene Shechet." Retrieved September 25, 2023. In the early 2000s she began receiving attention''The New York Times'' June 23, 2001, p. B7. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Koplos, Janet. "Arlene Shechet at A/D," ''Art in America'', January 2002, p. 109–10. for sculpture exploring diverse materials and themes of flux, growth, enlightenment and Buddhism,Johnson, Ken ''The New York Times'', May 3, 2002, p. E40. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Temin, Christine. "Perspectives: Assorted Artists Capture 'Rapture,'" ''Boston Globe'', February 2, 2000, p. D1.Forster, Ian "Arlene Shechet Sculpts Time," ''Art21'', June 29, 2015. Retrieved September 26, 2023. as well as for handmade paper works that she manipulated like clay.Harrison, Helen A ''The New York Times'', January 5, 2003. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Abruzzo, James and Mina Takahashi "Chairman and Director's Messages," Dieu Donné Papermill. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
Wider recognition came with museum exhibitions of her assemblage work with clay.Howe, Liz. "Arlene Shechet: Working on the Edge," ''Ceramics Monthly'', December 2010.Smith, Roberta ''The New York Times'', March 19, 2009. Retrieved September 26, 2023. These included solo shows at the Tang Museum (2009),Berry, Ian. ''Arlene Shechet: Blow by Blow'', Saratoga Springs, NY: Tang Museum, 2009.
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA Denver), in Denver, Colorado, was founded in 1996 as the first dedicated home for contemporary art in the city of Denver. For seven years, MCA Denver occupied a renovated fish market in Sakura Square in lower dow ...
(2009),MacMillan, Kyle. "MCA exhibits showcase big names, big ambitions from Big Apple," ''Denver Post'', November 22, 2009.
Weatherspoon Art Museum
The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more e ...
(2013),
RISD Museum
The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD Museum) is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877, and still shares multiple build ...
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple na ...
Holland Cotter
Holland Cotter is an art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Life and work
Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1970, wh ...
wrote that Shechet's career "has encompassed both more or less traditional ceramic pots and wildly experimental abstract forms: amoebalike, intestinal, spiky, sexual, historically referential and often displayed on fantastically inventive pedestals … Taken together, this is some of the most imaginative American sculpture of the past 20 years."
In installations at the
Frick Collection
The Frick Collection is an art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection (normally at the Henry Clay Frick House, currently at the 945 Madison Avenue#2021–present: Frick Madison, Frick Madison) features Old Master paintings and Europe ...
(2016), Phillips Collection (2016) and
Harvard Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
Meissen porcelain
Meissen porcelain or Meissen china was the first European hard-paste porcelain. Early experiments were done in 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger continued von Tschirnhaus's work and ...
bowl from 1730 appearing to hover over a rougher object that Shechet cast from the outside of the bowl's original mold. The show—the Frick's first of a living artist in depth—was a result of Shechet's many months working closely with artisans in a Meissen studio.
In addition to museum exhibitions, Shechet has shown at
Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is an American contemporary and modern art gallery with 9 locations worldwide. It was founded in Boston by Arne Glimcher in 1960. His son, Marc Glimcher, is now president and CEO. Pace Gallery operates in New York, London, Hong ...
Vielmetter Los Angeles Vielmetter Los Angeles (formerly Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects) is a contemporary art gallery founded in 2000 by Susanne Vielmetter. The gallery is located in downtown Los Angeles.
History
Susanne Vielmetter launched her first gallery i ...
(2019, 2022),Taft, Catherine "Arlene Shechet," ''Artforum'', June 2022. Retrieved September 26, 2023. and earlier, at Jack Shainman (2010) and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (2013–16) in New York, among others.Rooney, Kara "Arlene Shechet: The Sound of It," ''The Brooklyn Rail'', November 2010. Retrieved September 26, 2023.Heinrich, Will ''The New York Times'', October 20, 2016. Retrieved September 26, 2023. She also curated shows at the
Drawing Center
The Drawing Center is a Manhattan, New York, museum and a nonprofit exhibition space that focuses on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary.
History
The Drawing Center was founded by former assistant curator of drawings at ...
Shechet is best known for her assemblage-style sculpture involving—among other materials—ceramic, steel, concrete, wood and paint (e.g., ''Moon in the Morning'', 2022). The works tend, to varying degrees, to be figurative—incorporating human-associated forms and objects—and are often life-sized in scale.Hambleton, Merrell ''The New York Times'', February 27, 2020. Retrieved September 26, 2023. She employs architectural methods and materials in her work, juxtaposing them with biomorphic forms and unusual, finely worked finishes. In her review of Shechet's 2019 Vielmetter show, ''Los Angeles Times'' critic Leah Ollman described the approach as "architectural order meets a sort of bodily disorder."
Entropy and humor are common themes in Shechet's pieces. They frequently evoke perceptions of movement, particularly involving balance and its potential loss.Hirsch, Faye “Buckle and Flow," ''Art in America'', January 2012, p. 58–64. Retrieved September 26, 2023.''The New Yorker'' "Arlene Shechet," November 4, 2013. Retrieved September 26, 2023. For example, her 2013 show, "Slip," included a biomorphic piece (''No Noise'', 2013) that seemed upended, as though it had slipped on a banana peel. The concepts of movement and balance also appear metaphorically in the work.
Critics frequently note a contrast between the organic and spontaneous character of Shechet's sculptures and the technical skill needed to produce them. Clay undergoes several stages of shaping and drying before being fired in Shechet's walk-in kiln. Hardwood is carved with heavy machinery and often prepared in advance with years of weathering on her property, which creates fissures and insect tracts that the artist fills or employs compositionally. Paint and glaze effects are chosen from a series of samples that Shechet developed methodically in tests.
Shechet's work is often heavily referential, communicating its position both within and outside the art historical context and the broader culture. In 2018, when the sculptor was commissioned to create a public art installation at
Madison Square Park
Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, fourth President of the United States. ...
, she named it ''Full Steam Ahead'' in reference to the park's Admiral Farragut naval monument, which sat across from her chosen site. Farragut's statue is seen by some as a symbol of the male domination historically prevalent in both art and society, and somewhat controversially, Shechet negotiated with park officials to empty the pool of water in front of the sculpture, effectively disempowering it. Similarly, the works in Shechet's "Slip" exhibition projected for ''Hyperallergic'' critic Thomas Micchelli "a kind of populist
formalism
Formalism may refer to:
* Form (disambiguation)
* Formal (disambiguation)
* Legal formalism, legal positivist view that the substantive justice of a law is a question for the legislature rather than the judiciary
* Formalism (linguistics)
* Scient ...
" that gave a nod to
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
sculpture while also subverting it, in effect providing "a fertile alternative to the formal progressivism that took over critical thinking in the postwar period."
Influences to Shechet's work are seen as wide ranging and include
Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos (born Panagiotis Harry Voulkos; 29 January 1924 – 16 February 2002) was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic ...
Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman (born Eliasz Nadelman; February 20, 1882 – December 28, 1946) was a Polish-American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of folk art.
Early years
Nadelman was born and studied briefly in Warsaw and then visited Munich in 1902 ...
Auguste Rodin
François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a uniqu ...
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...
(2011) and
College Art Association
The College Art Association of America (CAA) is the principal organization in the United States for professionals in the visual arts, from students to art historians to emeritus faculty. Founded in 1911, it "promotes these arts and their understa ...
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...
, Dieu Donné Papermill, Joan Mitchell Foundation and VIA Art Fund, among others.VIA Art Fund. "VIA Art Fund Awards $1 Million in Grants in 2021," News, 2021. She is an inductee of the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
(2016) and American Arts and Letters Award (2023).Reizman, Renée "Arlene Shechet's Gestures and Jesters," ''NAD Journal'', May 1, 2019. Retrieved September 26, 2023.American Academy of Arts and Letters "2023 Newly Elected Members," News, February 21, 2023. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
Shechet's work belongs to the public collections of the
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most importa ...
Blanton Museum of Art
The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent coll ...
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
,
Harvard Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
,Harvard Art Museums Arlene Shechet Collection. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
Hirshhorn Museum
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...
,Hirshhorn Museum Arlene Shechet Collection. Retrieved September 25, 2023. Institute of Contemporary Art Boston,Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Arlene Shechet, ''Essential Head'' Art. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
The Jewish Museum
The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the Unit ...
,The Jewish Museum Arlene Shechet, ''Travel Light'' Art. Retrieved September 25, 2023. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Museum of Arts and Design
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the mus ...
Nasher Sculpture Center
Opened in 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is a museum in Dallas, Texas, that houses the Patsy and Raymond Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. It is located on a site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the Dallas Art ...
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
Rhode Island School of Design Museum
The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD Museum) is an art museum integrated with the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, Rhode Island, US. The museum was co-founded with the school in 1877, and still shares multiple build ...
,Rhode Island School of Design Museum Arlene Shechet Collection. Retrieved September 25, 2023.
San Jose Museum of Art
The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast of the United Sta ...
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
,Walker Art Center Arlene Shechet Collection. Retrieved September 25, 2023. and Whitney Museum, among others.