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On Art: Books' realism both beautiful and disturbing
Saturday, June 26, 1999 By Donald Miller, Post-Gazette Art and Architecture Critic
One of the most beautiful photography books I have seen recently is "Along the Way" by California photographer Mark Citret.
Published by Custom & Limited Editions, San Francisco, in a hardcover edition of 3,700 ($50) and a deluxe boxed edition of 300, ($500) this large-format volume contains about 140 unnumbered pages.
Citret was born in Buffalo in 1949, grew up in the city by the bay and has been photographing seriously since 1968.
His book, printed on heavy paper in Italy, is an exquisite production. The black and white photographs have a pale-toned quality that lifts the sometimes everyday subject matter to a higher plane -- that and the photographer's masterly eye, somewhat recalling Ansel Adams, but different in how intensely he has studied his subjects before photographing them.
These are for the most part subtle offerings: often misty landscapes and hushed interiors.
"Racing Sculls," 1995, catches the loneliness of a dock empty except for the overturned craft and the water and mist beyond. Nothing intrudes except the dark reeds that resemble a furry dark pelt.
The most flamboyant shot is of a "Large Bovine Statue" of a Hereford bull staring out of the photograph directly at the viewer in a near desert locale.
Every artist is concerned with light, but for Citret there is a special relationship that has resulted in a quietly memorable book.
Her latest illustrated monograph, "Joseph Csáky: A Pioneer of Modern Sculpture" (American Philosophical Society; $40) is an excellent study of Csáky (pronounced "Shocky") (1888-1971), a Hungarian cubist who became a dedicated member of the Paris avant-garde in the Picasso era.
The sculptor's work, although individual and accomplished, is comparable to Brancusi and Archipenko. Csáky's "Cones and Spheres," 1919, for instance, is as fine a modernist bronze as one could wish for.
Unfortunately, the sculptor spent his last 30 years in obscurity. In telling his story, Balas has performed a valuable service. She brings the artist to his rightful place in modern art in a fine way the reader will remember. Brava! The volume is available at the CMU Book Store.
Feuerman, of New York, also brings a breathtaking superrealist technique that she joins with a humanist approach to her subjects.
Her realism is not just pretty but pretty disturbing in that she carefully exploits each piece's potential to suggest actual people.
The work, in resin, cast marble, bronze and other often painted materials, ranges from early erotic reliefs through full-scale sculptures of athletes and classical nudes. Included are children, self-portraits and lovers.
The sculptures are of body parts cast from, or modeled and carved after, the living model.
Surfaces are painted to suggest flesh. Among Feuerman's most astonishing effects are water drops on the flesh of swimmers and women emerging from the shower.
These are very physical works of art exulting in the body but suggesting the underlying emotion of living. Yet the artist also offers several different sculptures that move away from reality to abstract form.
This is a challenging and frequently erotic book. It is enhanced by David Finn's intense photography. Essays by Dena Merriam and Eleanor Munro explain what Feuerman is about as much as words can.
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Edith Balas, Carnegie Mellon University professor of art history, has resuscitated the life of a virtually forgotten modernist.