Word: scher
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...STEVEN SCHER The Bronx...
Compression and Restraint. The show was organized by Brown University's Medievalist Stephen K. Scher. The most distinctive characteristic of Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, he points out, derives from the fact that it was designed to be incorporated into a church. "Whether it be the pyramid of a capital," says Scher, "or the perpendicular wall planes of the portal, the sculpture is forced to obey the laws of the structural mass. The resulting compression and restraint resemble a collected horse in dressage; the energy returns upon itself and becomes totally contained within the basic form...
With the sculptures at the top of columns, they demonstrate Scher's point about contained energy. But, mercifully, the columns are much shorter than the originals. The sculpture's modeling is calligraphic rather than realistic, and they take on new power to modern eyes conditioned to depreciate the technical skills of representation in favor of the purer visions of stylization. Samson grappling with the lion, an llth century capital from Avignon's Notre Dame des Doms, contains within its stylized forms both the violence of the struggle and the authority of an abstraction. Its companion piece, representing...