Robert Cremean: CURIA, Nine Sectioned Lay-Ins With Predella

Laminated sugar pine, modeling paste, graphite

8'h x 17'w' x 2'deep

 

CURIA, Nine Sectioned Lay-Ins With Predella is the fifth part of THE NARCISSUS PENTOLOGY (1971-1982). It was begun in November, 1979, and completed during the winter of 1981-1982.

 

THE NARCISSUS PENTOLOGY:

Homage to Paul Apostle

Vatican Corridor, A Non-Specific Autobiography

Glimpses of the Queen, 21 Studies for a Portrait of B.T. in the Form of a Triangle

Sanctuary, Autobiography of a Studio Bench

Curia, Nine Sectioned Lay-Ins With Predella

 

In his book, THE TENTH ARCH, the artist wrote the following:

 

"CURIA is my last major carving. It is one of the very few works of my own that continue to give me pleasure when revisited. I continue to respond to its maturing golden pine and white predella. It is also one of those pieces that lie on the curve of change...and, of course, the amusing conceit of that mallet and chisel....

 

"At a forum, standing in front of CURIA, I was asked why there were more men than women (being 6 vs. 3). My answer was that the women, though one half in number, were placed at points of power: beginning, middle and end. It is true in the broad structures of connection and inter-connection. Power is feminine.

 

"As my life in the studio evolves, I feel more and more part of a consistent whole. The figures that comprise CURIA are as they are because this is the ordering of my life. My answer was simply the recognition of the fact that, indeed, there is symmetry and that this symmetry is part of a larger symmetry, and on and on. There is a true sense of delight in recognizing ones place in things."

 

Collection:

Fresno Art Museum

Fresno, California

 

The tools used by the artist in the creation of the last four parts of the NARCISSUS PENTOLOGY were mallet, wood chisels, files and sandpaper. When CURIA was finished, the mallet and principal chisel used throughout the carving process were permanently affixed to the raised portion of the predella.

 

“CURIA is the only one of the five works that does not physically include the viewer as cohabiter of its space. It exists as a line... CURIA is a canonization. For better or worse, each of us has our own particular set of saints—those who have in one way or another worked miracles. These nine are mine wherein Alice Brown (my paternal grandmother) shares equally with the likes of Rilke and Michelangelo. As they have created me, I am re-creating them and this process of creation and re-creation is unending until the end of civilization itself.” Robert Cremean

 

Each of us may have his or her own personal curia of saints, those whose influence upon us has been inspiring and profound. The nine members of this particular CURIA, in the form of a line, are the personal saints of Robert Cremean, three women and six men, all actual individuals, three of whom are still living. Robert Cremean not only honors the individuality of each but also places them within one of three triptychs. The first three are the prime influences upon his youth: a grandmother, a lover and a sculptor. The second triptych consists of three writers who most influenced and challenged him during his early middle years. And the final triptych consists of a sculptor, a writer and an intellectual sparing partner. These three, like the others of his curia, deeply challenged him on all levels: intellectually, spiritually and personally. The positioning of the three women within CURIA is noteworthy: the first figure was the prime influence of his youth, the middle figure the catalyst of his intellectual blossoming, and the last an intellectual sparing partner who brutally tested without remorse any and all ideas he presented her or that together they encountered.

 

The first figure on the left is Alice Brown, the paternal grandmother of the artist who is represented by the child she is embracing. It was her unabashed love of life, her “naughtiness” at a time when her particular innocent behavior was frowned upon by both her Ohio family and surely by her church, that endlessly delighted him. She was the matriarch who embarrassed her family but thrilled her grandson each time she could not contain an immoderate expression of her joy, an elderly lady raising her legs much too explosively high when riding a wild steed on the merry-go-round, for example. Her family blamed her exuberance and her socially uncharacteristic behavior on the facts of her own genetic heritage; she was, after all, part Cherokee and Iroquois! She imbued in her grandson that particular “naughty”and sardonic sense of humor and play that remains almost a trademark of the personality of the artist. He continues to speak of her with undiminished and respectful love.

 

The second figure was his first truly beloved, a fellow student at Cranbrook Academy of Arts in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Although their actual time together was not of long duration, the love and the friendship has endured, at times placidly and at others stormily enough to result in years of silence between them. In his hands is held a dove, the universal symbol of peace and of love. Perhaps it was with “J” that the artist first recognized with apodictic certainty the nature and the power of his own sexuality and of his responsibility to be respectful and true to it.

 

The third figure is that of the sculptor Donatello whose poetic clarity, sensitivity and sculptural vocabulary challenged and stimulated his imagination, works that not only occupy a particular space but which dominate and expand it and give it life, and in particular the bronze David housed in the Bargello in Florence.

 

The fourth figure, the first of the second triptych, is that of Hermann Hesse whose intellectual brilliance further galvanized his imagination to overcome the residual ideas and restrictive attitudes ingrained in him during his childhood.

 

The fifth figure is that of a writer with a profound and articulate intellect, a close friend, the person who, at a most critical moment in the life of the artist appeared and intellectually sparred with him without fear and without reservation. They maintained an intense conversation, a debate, that raged with mutual respect and with love for more than three years and that continued sporadically for many years thereafter. “D” occupies the central pivotal position in CURIA as she did in the life of the artist. Although never married and without child, she appears in CURIA to have her hands resting upon an apparent pregnancy. And those hands not only are her own but are, metaphorically within this triptych, those both of Hermann Hesse on her right and of Rainer Maria Rilke on her left, hands resting upon ideas and possibilities in gestation within.

 

The sixth figure is that of Rainer Maria Rilke. He is a personal saint of particular import to the artist, his words and ideas quoted by the artist within his own work and in lectures given by him, particularly those taken from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

 

The seventh figure and the first of the final triptych is Michelangelo, the chin of the bearded mature side of his double image resting upon his mallet. It would appear obvious why Michelangelo would be a member of the artist’s personal curia but it should be noted that particular works were of prime importance to Robert Cremean and continue to be so: the unfinished marble pietà in the cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiori, and the unfinished slaves in the Académia in Florence.

 

The eighth figure is that of J.A. Baker, British author of The Peregrine. When he read it, the artist was both deeply moved by the language and by the observed habits and flight of the peregrine. The figure of the author is holding a falcon, a bird in balance with the dove of the second figure in CURIA but, unlike it, is powerful and restive, recognizing the necessity to take flight both actually and metaphorically. It was at this particular moment in his life, and with the reading of The Peregrine, that the artist knew that his continuing to adhere to the socially and culturally expected and demanded behavior of an artist within the restrictive cultural metaphor was both hypocritical and impossible. The poetic majesty, the unbridled freedom, and the decisive actions of the peregrine, however cruel they may appear to the eye of the romantic initiate, metaphorically mirrored all too clearly what he felt and what would be the personal and practical decisions he would make thereafter that would radically and irrevocably change his life and the direction of his career, including his disassociation thereafter with any commercial art gallery.

 

The ninth and last of the figures of CURIA is that of B.T., a powerful intellect the artist met at the Huntington Hartford Foundation in the late 1950s. Her influence upon him was profound and their “friendship” continued for more than thirty turbulent years during which they were engaged in an endless conversation/debate, usually over vodka martinis, that invariably ended with angry exchanges followed by a delicious, often forgotten meal. When he first met her, Robert Cremean recognized that although he had read extensively he was not a reader. B.T. provided him with a specific reading list, authors he had never before encountered, authors whose works quite literally changed his view of nearly everything he had previously and thereafter encountered. Virginia Wolfe, amongst dozens of others, was prominent on the list. It was B.T. who became the subject of the third part of THE NARCISSUS PENTOLOGY, Glimpses of the Queen, 21 Studies for a Portrait of B.T. in the Form of a Triangle as well as Seven Studies for a Portrait of B.T. that preceded it.

 

At the foot of the nine figures of CURIA is the artist’s diary of sorts, an illustrative narrative in bas relief and pencil. And within the narrative is a small pyramidal platform on which are permanently placed the mallet and principle chisel used by the artist during all the years of carving. This, then, is the last carving in wood done by Robert Cremean who has made clear that he will never again take up mallet and chisel.

 

(Robert Cremean: Metaphor and Process, the video, may be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgrxW8xSvrA)

Done