Orange Pop

Contact II by Alex Liberman is repaired, repainted and restored to Jamison Square.

See – Contact II – Spring Cleaning
See – Pop Art Classic in Need of Help

 

Contact II – Spring Cleaning

The Regional Arts and Culture Council unbolted Contact II, by Alexander Liberman, a pop art sculpture located at Jamison Square in Portland, and hauled it off for Spring cleaning and a new coat of paint.

See Pop Art Classic in Need of Help, posted here just one week ago! Very good.

 

Pop Art Classic in Need of Help

Contact II, a gift to the City by Portland collector Ed Cauduro in memory of Ernest and Teresa Cauduro, is a great sample of artist Alexander Liberman’s pop art style.

Besides his work as an editor at Conde’ Nast, Russian born Liberman, 1912-1999, was a prolific essayist, photographer of famous artists, painter and sculptor, churning out dozens of urban items like this example, many of them also a bright, specific red-orange, usually from cut and curved half inch iron, and set against a natural background.

His intimate portraits of painters such as Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Duchamp and others are unmatched. Many / most were collected for a show at the Getty in 2003, Photographs of Artists by Alexander Liberman. Liberman authored the essential undergrad text, The Artist in His Studio, based on his unique experience meeting and capturing the greatest artists of the century.

See Begob at University of Michigan.
See Iliad at Columbia University.
See Symbol in Rockford, Illinois.

Barbara Rose created a major retrospective of Liberman’s work in her 1991 Alexander Liberman.

The artwork is located at the William Jamison Square in downtown Portland. Jamison, a Portland gallery owner and bon vivant, died in 1995 at age 49. Also in the one block square park are four totem towers by Kenny Scharf, a wonderful fountain which draws flocks of small children on sunny days, trees, a “beach and boardwalk” area, and a recent incongruous addition of a granite sculpture of a polar bear cub and seal cub cuddling (which is a really twisted message for the kids) by Mauricio Saldana and donated by the Pearl Rotarians.

Contact II is in bad shape. The surface layer of red-orange paint has chemically changed, either by sunlight or from a chemical wash – a more likely cause. It has transformed to a pale pink-orange, and where before the powder coat paint job was highly resistant to scratches and vandalism, the altered surface can be etched easily – and has been. There are now large, mostly abstract (!) scratches to the surface layer of paint, clearly visible from the street, which probably follow a pattern of where the chemical wash adhered to the surface.

To gain the trust vital for future gifts of this quality, close and informative communication between the curators of the City’s official art collection and the street and ppark maintenance crews is essential. Gifts like Contact II are to be treasured, and not damaged.

BTW, thanks again Ed!

 

Arlene Schnitzer

I was just going sit down and write about the WOW bright orange Alexander Liberman sculpture just sitting by itself behind the Jamieson Fountain, but to understand why the Liberman is sitting there, you have to understand how it got there.

You have to understand why Maya Lin ISN’T there and that Tanner Creek Park thing is a placeholder workup. And you need to know Ed Cauduro is Portland’s great collector of sculpture, and helped get the short-lived Pearl Arts Foundation off the ground.

If you’re interested in Portland and interested in its art, know Arlene Schnitzer pushed open the doors past Mr. Otis and the Arlington Club titterers, first with the Fountain Gallery which colonized what Bill Naito much later labeled “Old Town.” (The Fountain Gallery folded in the 80’s into the Laura Russo gallery.) All sorts of extravagant art + culture waded into provincial puddletown via Arlene.

So give Arlene the floor – and tell her story. Take a few minutes and read her brief oral history of her civic and aesthetic work.

From the enormous Louis Bunce in the Portland Convention Center to the Performing Arts Center, for decades Arlene has been a light hand, gently urging folks to consider something nicer to look at. Or listen to. Or feel.

Start with Arlene. Then I can write about the rest.

Above is just a section of the impossible-to-photograph Louis Bunce at the Portland Convention Center.