Presence at the Holburne Museum
June 4, 2012
BATH, ENGLAND— Visitors step through a diverse display of portrait sculpture at the Holburne Museum’s new exhibition, Presence. Greeted at the door by a Madame Tussaud waxwork of Henry Moore, viewers enjoy arresting juxtapositions of realist, idealist, and abstract work.
The show features exhibits ranging from Egyptian mummy masks and Greco-Roman heads to an eyeless Giocametti and a Brancusi bust. British literary heroes, too, populate the crowd— a plaster of poet laureate Colley Cibber gazes at viewers near the great William Shakespeare. Further on stands a figure of Jeremy Wood, the banker said to have inspired Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge. The work of major contemporary artists is also well represented, with contributions by Marc Quinn, Daphne Wright, Don Brown, and Ron Mueck—whose Mask II reproduces the human presence in every detail, glowing convincingly with a slight sheen of perspiration. This young British artist recently exhibited a show of new work at Hauser & Wirth’s Saville Row location in London.
The eclectic, carefully-curated sculptural survey treats museum visitors to a challenging consideration of the way space, medium, color and scale combine to create presence in portraiture.
The exhibition, which opened Sunday, May 26, will run until September 2.
Image via the Holburne Museum
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