Betty Woodman at Max Protetch - New York - Brief Article

The simile between clay vessels and human bodies is one of the oldest going, but it is reshaped with particular vigor in Betty Woodman's new work. Aeolian Pyramid, the most imposing work in the exhibition, consists of 35 tall, slender, cylindrical glazed pots, clearly individuated and placed on stepped rows, like the audience in a Greek amphitheater. Flat ceramic cutouts, recalling masks or shields, painted black and creamy white, are attached to the front of each vessel. The fragmentary outline of classical urns dominates, but the elliptical forms can also be read as svelte female bodies, a notion supported by the easy curves of the facades and their flesh-toned underglazing.

Woodman, who spends part of each year in Italy, visited the Aeolian Islands last year and made this work partly in response to a display there of hundreds of Italian amphorae recently recovered from a 1,700-year-old shipwreck. Aeolian Pyramid also reflects, Woodman tells us, the ranks of ancient clay warriors excavated at Xian in China, and the 1,001 figures in the Sanjusangendo hall in Kyoto. Among discernible links to more recent work is a particularly strong connection to Matisse, suggested in this show by everything from the virtuoso draftsmanship, to a perfect sense of Mediterranean light, to the irresistible luxe, calme and volupte that prevailed throughout. Odyssean Dream, a wall-mounted work made from the clay remaining when the Aeolian Pyramid facades were cut, is especially Matissean--its hot, bright colors on the slender, loosely assembled clay pieces glinting like light on water or a school of tropical fish. (Tony Cragg's early mosaic wall sculptures also come to mind.)

Though Odyssean Dream and Aeolian Pyramid were the only works shown that were direct complements, nearly everything here was distinctly dual, and it is in fact this surprisingly porous boundary between singular and plural that winds right through the middle of Woodman's current work. Japanese Couple at the Carmine, for instance, presents a pair of cylindrical vessels flanked with voluptuously curved ceramic wings. On one side, soft shades of terra-cotta, cream and black depict richly patterned, folded and sashed kimonos. On the back, a riot of color and freely drawn form breaks out, as boisterously Italianate as the reverse is serenely Asian. Similarly, the two vessels of Baroque Diptych are glazed in cool shades of aqua, cerulean and white on one side, and on the other, a fittingly baroque swirl of spicy colors is attributed to the women in flaring kimonos.

Many artists have visited the crossroads of ceramics, painting and sculpture--of functional and expressive form--and traffic there remains heavy. But it is Woodman's practiced ease with the full range of historical, formal and narrative ideas called forth at this juncture that remains hard to match.

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