Marisol Escobar (1930-2016) was born in Caracas, Venezuela, to wealthy parents who supported her interest in art. Her father Gustavo was able to provide her with an independent income. Her dearly loved mother Josefina, a patron of the arts in Venezuela, committed suicide when Marisol was eleven. The family then moved to Los Angeles, then to Paris, where Marisol studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and finally to New York City, where she studied at the Art Students League and the New School for Social Research (1951-1954). During that time, Abstract Expressionism was the new trend. Marisol, a Greenwich Village beatnik, was influenced by life on the streets and in the bars. The Cedar Tavern was the hangout for the Abstract Expressionists and there she developed lasting friendships, particularly with Willem de Kooning. She also discovered Pre-Columbian pottery and sculpture. Eventually sculpture and ceramics would become her artistic forte.
Abstract Expressionist painters like De Kooning and Pollock made paintings that were filled with personal emotions and came from places of depression and alcohol. Marisol talked about her art at that time in a 1965 interview with the New York Times: “It started as a kind of rebellion. Everything was so serious. I was very sad myself and the people I met were so depressing. I started doing something funny so that I would become happier — and it worked.” Her early works were roughly carved wooden figure sculptures influenced by Pre-Columbian art. She was discovered by Leo Castelli, who had just opened his New York gallery, and he gave Marisol her first exhibition in 1958. It was a huge success.
“Bathers” (1961-1962) is an excellent example of the funky, fun element she was looking for. Three women bathers are made of found wood that she assembled and shaped into legs, arms, and bodies. They are posed casually on a beach on a sand-colored floor. Their faces are painted on the wood. Bathing suits, where they exist, are also painted. The feet and hands, made of shaped ceramic, are a lighter color than the bodies that appear to be suntanned, while the hands and feet are not. Lying on her stomach in the foreground, a female bather wears a bright yellow hat, and she may or may not be nude. But her tush is formed in light clay and is not tanned. The women are enjoying a day at the beach; the observer can enjoy the fun as well.
Marisol did not think of herself as a member of the POP art movement like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. POP artists decided to choose iconic images the public could easily understand and identify in reaction to the need of the viewer to have abstract paintings explained. Coca Cola, Campbell Soup, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley were the POP icons of choice. The artists’ intention was to make a statement that these were the things and individuals the public held most dear. They left it up to the viewer to make a comparison or judgment about today’s icons.
Marisol’s sculpture “John Wayne” (1962-63) (104’’ x 96’’ x15’’) was commissioned by Life magazine in 1962. The magazine ran a special edition celebrating Wayne and his films, and the issue featured Marisol’s sculpture on the cover. John Wayne is posed on a cut-out wooden horse that is painted red with green spots; it resembles a carousel horse. Wayne is dressed in jeans and cowboy boots. His legs are on either side of the horse and his feet stand on the ground. He does not sit on the saddle. His upper body is a block of wood, and his face is painted in each of the four sides. His right hand, made of ceramic, is attached to a holster holding a gun. His right arm is raised, holding a gun as if to aim and shoot. His left hand, also ceramic, tightly grasps the pommel of the saddle. Wayne wears a yellow cowboy hat. Looking at the piece as a whole, a black pole runs from below his feet and presumably up through the center of the figure. He is riding a carousel or he is a weathervane. The super-macho depiction of John Wayne is comical and satirical at the same time.
Despite her sudden and enormous popularity, Marisol was quite shy and found “modern life increasingly disturbing.” She was the toast of the town; Andy Warhol called her “the first girl artist with glamour.” Marisol said, “I never wanted to be part of society. I have always had a horror of the schematic, of conventional behavior. All my life I have wanted to be distinct, not to be like anyone else. I feel uncomfortable with the established codes of conduct.”
Marisol’s “The Family” (1963), while depicting an upscale family, is critical of the social norm. The father, placed in the background, is painted on a flat piece of wood and is separated from the family group. The fashionable mother appears to be speaking, but her eyes, covered by her fashionable Jackie Kennedy hat, give no clue about her feelings. She is accompanied by two little girls; one wears a yellow dress and makes a disagreeable face, the other in orange appears to be a duplicate of her mother. As was the fashion of the day, the mother wears white gloves to push a baby carriage with two babies. It is a modern family, but is it a happy family? Marisol was often inspired by objects she found in the city, such as the real baby carriage in the piece: “All my early work came from the street. It was magical for me to find things. There was a thrown-out baby carriage, so I made a mother with her baby in the carriage.”
When Hawaii became a state in 1965, it was eligible to place two statues representing significant Hawaiians in the Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol. The Hawaiian Statuary Hall Commission established a competition to select the artist. The statue was to be of Father Damien, a Catholic a priest who chose to serve in the leper colony on Molokai. Sixty-six artists sent in models; seven were selected. From the final seven, Marisol’s submission received the commission. Researching Father Damien for the competition, Marisol discovered he knew carpentry. She submitted her model carved from wood. The statue was cast in bronze and unveiled on April 15,1969, in the US Capitol. A second copy was placed at the entrance to the Hawaii State Legislature in Honolulu.
For the face of “Father Damien” (1969) (bronze), Marisol selected a photograph of the elderly priest showing the scars of leprosy on his face. Marisol stated she wanted “to undertake the work directly and simply in much the same way Father Damien did his work.” Father Damien’s right arm is in a sling that is patterned with a Hawaiian flower design. Beneath his cloak, in his right hand, is his cane. The broad-brimmed hat is the traditional hat worn by missionaries. The solid boxy figure, typical of all of Marisol’s sculptures, has captured the constant, competent, and passionately caring character of the priest. In the 16 years he spent at the colony, he built six chapels, built a home for boys and one for girls, make coffins and dug graves, in addition to hearing confessions and holding Mass every morning.
“Father Damien” is the only non-classical statue in Statuary Hall. By December 1875, he contracted the disease and died peacefully on April 15,1889. He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009.
Marisol spent a year in Asia in 1969. Meditating, scuba diving, and learning underwater photography allowed her to decompress and think. In an interview in 1975, she said, “When I came back (from the far east) I felt like doing something very pure, just for the sake of it… I wanted to do something beautiful.” One of her first series was of influential people in the arts. She visited the 90-year-old Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico, and she used a photograph she took to create “Georgia O’Keeffe with Dogs” (1977) (Sydney G Walton Park, Embarcadero, San Francisco). O’Keeffe is seated on a tree stump in the park with her two dogs. The dogs are often confused with bears, but they are Chow Chows, O’Keeffe’s faithful and much-loved companions. Although her body is a rectangular box, her smiling face is finely detailed to show the wrinkles she earned over her life time. Carefully carved and detailed, O’Keeffe’s hands appear to be strong and full of energy. Her right hand tightly grips her walking stick. She is alive and vital.
Like many artists in the 20th Century, when artistic development and change in art were rapid, Marisol embraced more contemporary themes. She tackled issues of hunger, poverty, and other social concerns, and continued to create work that touched the public until her death in 2016.
Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning. She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.
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