(Re)discovering Marisol, unbound icon of Pop Art
Marisol (1930-2016), Women and Dog, 1963-1964, wood, plaster, synthetic polymer, taxidermied dog head, 186.8 x 194.6 x 67.9 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 64.17a-i. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY
Organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the major exhibition presented this fall at the MMFA is the most comprehensive ever devoted to visionary artist Marisol (1930-2016). Open from October 7, 2023, to January 21, 2024, Marisol: A Retrospective includes more than 250 works and documents – from her impressive wood sculptures to her drawings and watercolours – that bear witness to the richness of her singular artistic practice spanning decades.
Alexandrine Théorêt
Born in Paris to Venezuelan parents under the name María Sol Escobar, Marisol spent her youth between France, Venezuela and the United States. At a very young age, she began drawing and visiting museums with her parents. Her artistic studies, as eclectic as her work, started at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and then continued in New York in 1950, notably at the Art Students League.
Influential, engaged and audacious, Marisol became an international art sensation in the mid-1960s, before being partially eclipsed within the art historical canon. Although she was part of the Pop art movement, she developed a resolutely individual style, born from a marriage of artistic influences – Pre-Columbian art, folk art from North and South America, Surrealism, Expressionism and Dada – which perplexed the critics.
Hans Namuth (1915-1990), Marisol, about 1960s, gelatin silver print, 35.5 x 26.6 cm. Marisol Papers, Buffalo AKG Art Museum. © 1991 Hans Namuth Estate. Courtesy of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
Described countless times as an observer of her times, Marisol drew inspiration from high culture as much as from pop culture, borrowing imagery from film, theatre, music, politics and the art world. These hybrid influences and inspirations were reflected in the techniques and materials she used, as well as in the themes she addressed in her work.
Organized chronologically and thematically, this exhibition invites visitors to rediscover the complex and iconic work of this unique artist, and to restore her to her rightful place in the history of art. It includes the artist’s most iconic sculptures as well as rarely exhibited sculptural works, in addition to drawings, prints, photographs and archival materials. The many themes explored by Marisol over the course of her career transcend her own times. This retrospective shines a light on her perceptive treatment of subjects still relevant today: environmental issues, depictions of women, questions of gender identity and expression and social justice.
John D. Schiff (1907-1976), Marisol with Dinner Date, 1963, photographic print, 25.4 x 20.3 cm. Marisol Papers, Buffalo AKG Art Museum. © John D. Schiff, courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York
Material Experimentations
The exhibition opens on the 1950s, when Marisol moved to New York to continue her artistic studies. This is where she began her experiments in sculpture, creating wood reliefs, terracotta and stone sculpture and plaster casts. The works displayed in this first gallery attest to the artist’s interest in Pre-Columbian sculpture and in the work of Auguste Rodin, while her large-scale wood pieces depicting cats or families reflect her encounter with American folk art.
Soon after her arrival, the artist caught the attention of Leo Castelli, famed New York gallery owner, who invited her to show her sculptures in his newly opened gallery. There, her works were exhibited in the context of internationally renowned contemporaries, such as Morris Louis, Alfred Leslie, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Then, just as she was starting to attract critical attention, Marisol decided to leave the United States and head for Rome. Overwhelmed by the suffocating New York art scene, Marisol fled in self-imposed exile in 1958, as she would more than once over the course of her career.
Marisol (1930-2016), My Wedding Cake, 1959, bronze, 50.8 x 29.2 x 23.5 cm. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, bequest of Marisol, 2016, 2021:30. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Mutable Forms, Mutable Selves
Upon her return to New York in 1960, Marisol gave her works a completely different spin. She turned to creating large-scale sculptures and assemblages. At New York’s Stable Gallery, starting in 1962, she showed sculptures combining drawings on wood along with carving, body casts (often using her own body) and found objects. Through these astounding works, the artist addressed current events and themes of the day, notably the role of women in society, gender norms, sexuality and the Cold War. She made a name for herself with her confrontational style, but also because of the place she occupied in the New York art world. In the mid-1960s, thousands of people hastened to see her shows: Marisol had become a celebrity.
Marisol (1930-2016), Bicycle Race, 1962, wood, paint, graphite, cast plaster, cast metal and plastic, 168.9 x 142.2 cm. Abrams Family Collection. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Bill Jacobson Studio
Marisol (1930-2016), Untitled, 1972, coloured pencil and felt-tip marker on paper, 43.1 x3 5.5 cm. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, bequest of Marisol, 2016, 2021:108. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
This is also the period when her reflections on society led her to more introspective work. She incorporated casts of her face and limbs into her wood sculptures: these fragments enabled her to animate her figures, but also to raise questions about her own identity, at a time when she was trying to reconcile her portrayal in the media and her self-perception.
Marisol (1930-2016), The Party, 1965-1966. Toledo Museum of Art. Museum Purchase Fund, by exchange, 2005.42A-P. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Although rooted in personal experience, Marisol’s sculpture commented on and criticized the society in which she lived. The works on display in the third gallery are good examples of how she upset established codes of femininity with her unique sense of humour.
Into the Swim
The exhibition continues with Marisol’s more socially committed works, in which the artist takes on subjects like ecology, politics, feminism, inequality, poverty and racism. In the late 1960s, upset by the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War and by several instances of police repression, she went on a journey that would take her to India, Nepal, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. She also went to Tahiti, where she learned how to scuba dive, an activity that would become a true passion. Over the course of her many underwater adventures, she made photographs and films, capturing the beauty of this little-known world.
The sculpture and watercolours on display here were made in the early 1970s, when the artist was back on American soil. The result of an exploration of the ties binding humans and animals, they attest to Marisol’s fascination with the underwater world she had come to discover.
Marisol (1930-2016), The Fishman, 1973, wood, plaster, paint acrylic and glass eyes, 173.3 x 71.1 x 84.4 cm. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, bequest of Marisol, 2016, 2021:37a-g. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
In New York, a new art scene opened up to her, in which collaborations between artists from wide-ranging backgrounds became common currency. She was able to expand her artistic practice by designing sets, props and costumes for some of the most prominent dance companies in the U.S., including Louis Falco and Martha Graham.
The Louis Falco Dance Company’s performance of Caviar, 1970. Décor and costumes by Marisol. Gelatin silver print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm. Marisol Papers, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Troubling Doubles
Throughout her career, Marisol remained interested in the status of women and in disrupting preconceived notions of gender and femininity. Starting in the 1970s, she began to address the concept of violence in her works. The large drawings she made starting in 1975 revisit the subjects of sexuality, gender and the objectification of women’s bodies. These imposing compositions incorporate body tracings, fragments of text sourced from personal confessions and overheard conversations, and even depictions of objects and scenes of interpersonal violence. At the same time, the artist continued making plaster casts. By making imprints of her face, hands, buttocks and other body parts, she was also exploring eroticism.
Marisol (1930-2016), Kiss, 1966, cast polyester, metal, and light, 23.4 x 15.4 x 25.4 cm. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, bequest of Marisol, 2016, 2021:34. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Portraiture, from the Personal to the Political
The exhibition concludes with Marisol’s sculpted portraits, which, starting in the 1970s, shifted between the personal and the political, the satirical and the sensitive. This was when she returned to the work begun a decade earlier, creating portraits of contemporary political figures, thus developing her public-art practice. In her monuments, several of which were destined for sites in Venezuela, the artist depicts major historical figures. Towards the late 1970s, she undertook a new series of portraits of ageing artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe, both of whom played an important role in her artistic development.
Marisol (1930-2016), Portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe with Dogs, 1977, graphite and oil on wood, 133.6 x 134.6 x 154.3 cm. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, bequest of Marisol, 2016, 2021:44a-i. © Estate of Marisol / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo Brenda Bieger, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Marisol’s last major body of work was a series highlighting disenfranchisement and marginalization of social groups in the postcolonial era. In fact, starting in the 1980s, poverty and famine became central themes of her output. In these socially conscious works, she began to denounce injustices and to convey the dignity of the disenfranchised.
The aim of the exhibition Marisol: A Retrospective is to increase the awareness and appreciation of this great artist, who, in her way of thinking and art-making, as rich as it was particular, seems to have been born before her time, so well-suited is she to ours.
Marisol: A Retrospective
October 7, 2023 – January 21, 2024
Credits and curatorial team
An exhibition organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and supported by a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Critical work related to this exhibition and collection was made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibition is curated by Cathleen Chaffee, Charles Balbach Chief Curator of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. The Montreal presentation is curated by Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Chief Curator of the MMFA, in collaboration with Alexandrine Théorêt, Assistant Curator of International Modern and Contemporary Art, MMFA.
The MMFA wishes to underscore the collaboration of its partner Hatch as well as the support lent by the FRench American Museum Exchange (FRAME) towards the financing of the exhibition catalogue. It further acknowledges the invaluable contribution of its official sponsor, Denalt Paints, and its media partners Bell, La Presse and the Montreal Gazette.
Marisol: A Retrospective was funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Government of Quebec.
The Museum’s major exhibitions receive funding from the Paul G. Desmarais Fund. The MMFA also wishes to thank the donors of its Foundation’s Philanthropic Circles for their generous support.
