Like Life was a 2018 sculpture exhibition at the Met Breuer Museum in New York. His eponymous catalog not only illustrates many of the exhibits, but also features several analytical essays of a substantial and challenging nature. The catalog is worthy of recognition in its own right and can be appreciated by anyone with an interest in art, even those who have not seen the exhibition. He makes a significant contribution to our appreciation of three-dimensional art that we tend to label “sculpture” and his ideas go far beyond what can be described as art criticism. Anyone who reads this book will understand the convoluted nature of this description, because its focus is always to question the received values through which we interpret our experience of art. Indeed, these essays might even challenge our understanding of anything we might see through the lens of bias, assumption, or mere interpretation. In short, everything. Like Life, the catalogue, thus becomes almost a disturbing experience. We know much more in the end, but only by realizing how little we understand about ourselves and our perception.
Like Life is obviously a pun on real life. It can also be read as an order, associated with a taste for life, which would be ironic, since the still life that these forms present is translated into many languages not as still, but as dead. One of the threads that unites the discussion is that when sculpture becomes literally like life, it has generally been relegated by critics to artifact and denied the label of art. And at the center of the discussion is the use of color.
Modeled after the mistaken assumption that classical sculpture expressed itself through a visual language derived from the pristine whiteness of marble, the history of sculpture developed through this mistaken desire to reproduce classical values through purity of whiteness and fineness of finish. . Like Life not only reminds us that these classic works were originally polychrome, but also asserts that this false set of values conveniently coincided with the European view that whiteness was always superior and that everything with color was, to the naked eye, white. lower. Everything polychrome was thus firmly relegated to the domain of the craftsman, not the artist. And it was this assumption that for centuries effectively separated the worlds of sculpture and painting.
The original Met Breuer exhibition showed sculpture from later medieval times to the present day, but not chronologically. He juxtaposed elements to illustrate themes, contrasts, and contradictions in a thoroughly thought-provoking way. Like Life’s catalog does this too, but the intellectual arguments within its texts are perhaps even more striking than the visual punches the exposition delivers.
Why in painting is an attempt to turn flesh the color of flesh normal and even praiseworthy, while in sculpture it has been seen for centuries as a devaluation of the object? Why do we expect a sculptor to start with stone, wood, or wax and shape it into an image of his choice, instead of molding it directly from the human form? Why do we continue to reject realism, when that realism represents everyday objects that we don’t normally associate with art? Why expect idealized human forms, instead of real people, flaws, weaknesses and all? Why doesn’t the sculpted nude human form generally still represent genitalia? Why do we devalue sculpture that is modeled directly from life? What becomes clear quite early in this journey through the history of sculpture is that the process it illustrates could be applied to any art form in which we are willing to offer opinions. It can be painting, music, theater, literature, poetry, etc. On what basis do we describe value or value, on what set of rules do we attribute artistic value? And what controlling role do our assumptions play in editing what we see, or at least in our interpretation of what we see? And, perhaps most important of all, if we are slaves to our assumptions, who or what generated them?
Functionality has always been a consideration. If an object is totally divorced from use, then it has always been more likely, in our Western way of thinking, to be considered art. Mannequins in shop windows, like the inflated polychrome cherubs that decorate altarpieces, have always been considered more functional than artistic. A sculptor chiselling a block of jasper to fashion a bust produces art, sometimes, while an undertaker molding a death mask does not. But then, a death mask doesn’t represent life, does it? It shows a form incapable of movement, after all. But then how can we see a still life as art, because that cannot be moved, right?
Seeing the exhibition itself and certainly reading the catalog can literally change the way a person sees the world. A flea market that used to offer repetitive tables of junk now presents objects that have a reason to exist. What the observer must try to deduce is why the manufacturer of the object decided to represent that thing, in that way, in that material and in that color. Like life, therefore, it leads to complication. What was previously seen, and perhaps largely ignored, is objectified, separated, deserves to be actively looked at, rather than passively, even disdainfully, received. Not many books have this kind of effect on their readers.
Like Life is both a challenge and a presentation. Yes, we are presented with images of sculptures and asked to react. But the commentary often offers such a radically different approach from what we might assume that it actually challenges us to reinterpret and reevaluate our assumptions. It’s what art is supposed to do, isn’t it?