Ivan Schwartz Blog

WE MAKE PRESIDENTS! Part 2

Thomas Jefferson in bronze at Monticello and in clay at StudioEIS

Creating consensus, with respect to what these portraits might look like, is easy the further back in time we go. In a pre-photography world, assuming availability of historical & visual reference material, the task is easier:  We wouldn’t expect George Washington to be smiling broadly or Thomas Jefferson to be grimacing – and so we look at a fairly narrow range of good painters and sculptors- (occasionally punctuated by the great - Houdon, is in a class by himself) analyze their work for repetitive stylization attitudes and flourishes, and then begin the task of adding to the body of historical portraiture.

 

Our response to these 18^th century gentlemen (almost no women- and by that I mean women who held political office or whose patents affected the expansion of the American economy as it comes to dominate the world by the mid 19^th century), is based entirely upon this cache of existing reference material - frozen in time. We have historical literature, paintings, sculpture, period fiction and anecdotal descriptions at our disposal to help put a face on these lives of the famous, politically accomplished and the industrious-who StudioEIS often recreates as bronze sculptures.

 

We (StudioEIS) may now begin to take some small bit of license with the advent of photography in 1839.  America’s first look into the camera, 1839-1864, a part of the Daguerreotype collection in the Library of Congress is hugely rewarding - we no longer need to speculate about hair style, clothing, or period attitudes- that information so necessary for our work is all there in photographs for the first time - and it is as liberating as it is informative. These same early photos also inform the viewer what is often missing from our frame of reference, and that is natural attitude. 

 

Photography makes it possible to see what people really looked like even if they preened for the camera.  Take a look at the wonderful book “Young America” Daguerreotypes by Southworth and Hawes - it is absolutely riveting. Not only do we see the famous, but we see the ordinary, often organized by professional association, which distinguishes one from another on the basis of dress, in turn revealing vast differences in class - it is a fascinating document and so useful to the visual storytellers like those of us at StudioEIS.  

 

Reverend Rollin Heber Neale, William Wadsworth Longellow, Alvin Adams & Charles Sumner

 

Even if we don’t know how tall or thin someone was, we can use the photographic image to make comparative decisions about their height & weight, and general demeanor - much as we did when we made a portrait figure of Nikita Khrushchev, whose diminutive height was closely guarded by the Russians when we were commissioned to make his portrait.  We also noticed that Abraham Lincoln was, on more than one occasion falling asleep in front of the camera; well documented by his drooping eye lids.

 

 

Nikita Khrushchev, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon -a few of the Presidents sculpted by StudioEIS. 

 

There is only a tiny revelation after all is said and done; this area of historical sculpture making, however well-trodden, begs for naturalism. This may sound overly simplistic, but consider the famous and politically powerful bring lots of popular memory to the artist’s studio – it is our job to discover what someone “really” looked like. This is why Madame Tussauds has been such a giant hit since the French Revolution.  People can get next to the famous, the powerful, the accomplished, and indeed even the notorious or the dead, and feel as if they are standing next to the real person.  In the case of Tussaud - today it’s mostly about fame for the viewer, but for us it’s got to do with history, art and storytelling.  This is why WE MAKE PRESIDENTS. 

 

Abraham Lincoln in bronze at President Lincoln's Cottage and for the National Miliitary Cemetery and Visitor Center at Gettysburg.

      

 

We Make Presidents!

I never dreamed that George Washington, who saved the Continental Army in August of 1776, would come, in the fullness of time, to save our bacon as well- but he did.

By the early 80s StudioEIS was bleeding red ink when we decided to flee a Manhattan walk up where sculpture production and expensive rents made a career as a sculptor as untenable as Washington’s 1776 defense of New York.

 

With a “dust bowl” era moving van Elliot and I, followed by a small army of the willing, took up residence on the Brooklyn waterfront in a neighborhood that looked like the back lot of “Stranger on the Third Floor” – a film noir classic.  Dark and increasingly deserted with manufacturing jobs in full flight from NYC, this former heartland of US Industrial manufacturing embraced the likes of us and gave sculpture production what it could not find in Manhattan- rent at $3.00 per square foot.

Following the success of a large portrait project; the first for us at a Presidential Library, StudioEIS began promoting itself as a figurative sculpture studio that had the capability to make serious portrait sculpture for the American History Museum Market. With our sculpture roots in the 19^th century, we felt well suited to fill a void on the visual storytelling side of exhibition design, in the burgeoning world of history and anthropology museums.

 

 

                                                       Washington Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY

One day the phone rang with a request to make a sculpture of George Washington. The outline of the project seemed a little dull at the time, but with its successful completion came more commissions - and then of course I realized that since we were now working on Washington Street in Brooklyn, a mere 300 yards from the place where Washington made his providential escape from the English - allowing him to fight another day - in effect giving birth to the nation, I felt an obligation to make all the Washington portraits anyone might want.  And there have been many. And  with each subsequent one, they became better and better.

It rained portrait sculptures for StudioEIS in 2003. We won a competition for the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to create the 42 signers of the US Constitution as life-sized bronze sculptures. After that there were National Park Service Projects, more Presidential Libraries and then in 06 we were commissioned to make three fantastic forensic portraits of George Washington for Washington’s beloved Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens - now the most famous of all Presidential house museums.

George Washington ages 19, 45, and 57 for George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens

2006 was followed by subsequent commissions to sculpt James and Dolley Madison, Thomas Jefferson for Monticello, and Abraham Lincoln twice in his bicentennial year for President Lincoln’s Cottage and the National Military Cemetery and Visitor Center at Gettysburg - the list goes on.

Several views of Madison sculpture: studio shot in clay, in bronze and at Montpelier dedicated 5/28/09

When you do this often, you have to find new paths to representational thinking. In order to do this, you must find new information that leads to these new pathways.  In the case of the Founding generation of Americans, some discoveries are made when we examine their clothing.  Jefferson, it turns out, was extraordinarily tall and very rangy – and this would be in contrast let’s say to the iconic image of Jefferson seen in ‘his’ memorial at the Tidal Basin in DC.  Or in Lincoln’s case, he was not only taller than any President, before or since, but he was skinny – very skinny, and you have to think that if you represent him as accurately as his clothing suggests you should, he’s going to  look more like a hare than America’s greatest President.

 

The more you do, the better you become at what you do, in part because the people you get to work with and the information that informs these projects gets better and better. You even get Goosebumps on occasion measuring Lincoln’s hat or George Washington’s breeches.  Inevitably you find fascination not only with some of the individuals whose lives you are representing (my reading pile is measured in the hundreds of pounds not width on the shelf) but also with your ability to find what Gertrude Stein called the “bottom nature” in these extraordinary individuals. My hope always is that as we freeze frame, building a sculpture over a period of a year or more, we develop an image not only for ourselves, but for others who will one day have an opportunity to view these works and find some curious inspiration in the visual representation. 

 

Measuring George Washington’s breeches and waist coat, and Lincoln’s iconic hat

Correcting the record. In installment #2, I make reference to " my girlfriend and I making the first commision in 1976." I'd like to correct the record by identifying this very fine sculptor and friend as Kate Maloney.  I.S.