Regional Reviews

NEW HAMPSHIRE

Henry Freedman: An Art Historian’s Circus
McGowan Fine Art • Concord, NH • www.mcgowanfineart.com

Henry Freedman, Remnant of a Renaissance Circus, 16 1/4 x 8 3/4 x 3 1/2".

Henry Freedman is an art historian who makes boxes and small constructions. In viewing his work, one must immediately come to grips with Freedman’s relationship to the work of Joseph Cornell. It also feels imperative to acknowledge, as the title of this exhibit does, that Freedman is an art historian. This work is loaded with homage to Cornell, but also to a deep and sensual appreciation for all that art has been for this man. Freedman’s work invokes Cornell, but perhaps even in the postmodern spirit of appropriation, Cornell is inhaled, tasted, and re-cast in personal terms. The work is beautifully made. There are many amateur artists who fall under the spell of the desire to make Cornell assemblages, but there are very few who are able to so carefully (and yet invisibly) craft such structures. Freedman’s structures are made of a multitude of old materials: wood, glass, paper, photo images, etc. All of these materials are put together with confidence and grace—there is both an apparent fragility and actual solidity in each object.

The work is also wonderfully erotic, in the full sense of the word. Cornell, of course, was a master at erotic suggestiveness; but Freedman gets there on his own. It is the poetic mixing of shapes, color, image, and, finally, the shapes of the constructions themselves, that create reference to the body, the human form, touch, feel, and sensation. The way that the constructions both contain references to the human form, and often create human form within themselves (torso, legs, head, arms), is wonderful.

In the work pictured here, Remnant of a Renaissance Circus, there is an encounter with gray, an overall gray that allows for tones and values to be delivered. A sense of depth surrounds the image of a Renaissance woman perched atop two dies covered with script. Atop the image is a sculptural child putta with two small lions; a gray ring frames the child and obscures. There is, herein, desire, restraint, longing, and flirtation with the prohibited. But holding it all together is form. This is what art can do.

—Craig Stockwell

To continue reading this review in the October/November issue, you can subscribe to Art New England by clicking the "Subscribe" icon below, or purchase a copy at your local newsstand or book retailer. Additional questions? Call (617) 782-3008 and ask to be connected to our circulation department.