November 13, 2014
Leonard Baskin created several series of prints honouring artists he admired.
Currently on display at the McMaster Museum of Art are five pieces from his book Twelve Sculptors: a book of monotypes with short notes on the monotypes and the sculptors (1988).
Of his numerous honorary portraits, Baskin wrote:
“I can but speculate as to why I have been put to the ardent making of homages to artists of the past, and in inordinate numbers. It is not, I feel certain, an act of simple or complex, straightforward or devious, obeisance, from a poor contemporary thing to the titans of the past: I suffer in myself no false humility. Rather, this near-blizzard of portraits-in-homage is the anxiety-obsessed wail emitted by an artist who feels isolated and under siege. It is the stretched, the harassed call of comrades-in-arms, for re-enforcing help and fighting strength, for justification, for reassurance, a battering on the door of history to send witnesses to plead his cause, to usurp the enemies who have so wantonly seized power and control.”
(Baskin, Iconologia, (1988): 1)
Here are the five portraits of sculptors now on view, alongside a photograph of a public sculpture by that particular artist:
Gift of Rabbi Bernard Baskin. ©The Estate of Leonard Baskin; Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York.
Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University 2007.004.0026
A sculptor who designed the Washington U.S. quarter dollar coin, which was issued in 1932.
Gift of Rabbi Bernard Baskin
©The Estate of Leonard Baskin; Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York.
Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University 2007.004.0031
She produced genre statuettes depicting domestic and feminine subjects that not only captured a refined segment of turn-of-the-century society, but also contributed to the vitalization of small bronze sculpture in America.
He was the best known expatriate American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school, as successful and lauded in France as he was in the United States. He was also a highly accomplished painter and portraitist. (MacMonnies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
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