RON MUECK

by Robert Storr

The most complete and up-to-date book on Ron Mueck and his distinctive, carefully crafted sculpture that explores reality’s relationship with artifice For a major exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, Ron Mueck has created three new works, which will be shown alongside five other significant sculptures. Whether monumental or smaller than life, Mueck’s works create a tension between the real and the phantasmagorical world.
This book will serve as a record of the exhibition, but will also be a reference work covering his sculpture over twenty years. It features photographs of his emblematic works, spectacular exhibition views of the new works presented at the Fondation Cartier, and images taken in his studio and during installation. Analytical essays study his work from the perspective of classical and modern art history, and an interview with Mueck invites readers to discover the artist’s intimate universe. 150 illustrations, 100 in color

Genres: Art

47 pages, Paperback

First published July 21, 2013

About the author

Robert Storr is an American curator, critic, painter, and writer.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The skin over his cheekbones was flat, though not taut, and the skin hung off the bone like curtains and gathered in loose jowly folds at the bottoms of his cheeks, and a fold of skin stretched from his chin to his throat like a cockscomb. Beatrice look at the different parts of Henry’s face for so long that they became discrete entities in her eyes, not the parts of a single face, but merely a mouth, a nose, an eye, another eye, a fluted veined translucent ear. She saw age in each of these details but not just age. She saw something more; she saw ears, eyes, nose, mouth, she saw his face, in each of its ages, as it had been and as it was now; she saw history. She saw time.”
Ron Mueck’s Couple Under an Umbrella reminds one of Dale Peck’s novel The Law of Enclosures.

This book was illuminating. It fleshed out (if you will) Mueck's place within art.

[XenofoneX · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ron Mueck's incredibly realistic, almost 'hyper-realistic' sculptures, present a staunch vision that refuses to idealize the human form. A newborn baby rests on its mothers' deflated belly, the umbilical cord still joining them, as the mother examines her child with a cold expression that betrays nothing of what she thinks or feels; in this case, the moment takes on an existential delicacy with the radical scaling-down of forms, the mother and child so frail and alone, reduced in size to a third of their typical dimensions. With his 'Mask' series, faces are blown-up to five-feet tall from chin to hairline, where they abrubtly terminate. They are disquieting facsimiles of people you might know, discorporate yet almost alive. No detail is forgotten, every wrinkle and hair replicated with an exactitude that is sometimes painful to behold. One of his most shocking works is, again, a newborn, this time alone and executed at a massive scale, over 15ft. long. His appreciation of human weakness and imperfection continues the tradition of artists like Caravaggio, whose insistence on using beggars, drunks and whores as models for the apostles, the holy virgin, and other revered biblical figures sometimes alienated his patrons in the Catholic church and caused problems he could have avoided with a more traditional approach. The book itself is beautifully constructed, with precise choices of material that can only be appreciated when you hold it in your hands. Illustrations accompanying the essays, for example, are collected into half-size booklets sewn into the binding, a technique I've seen once or twice, but rarely done due to expense. The books design is 'elegantly understated' (quotes due to a feeling I didn't make that phrase up), and relies entirely on the size of the artists' name, which is growing in stature alongside his sculptures. One feature that truly makes this the essential book on Ron Mueck is that it is more than an exhibition catalog. It also serves as a catalogue raisonne, including beautiful reproductions of every sculpture he has created throughout his career, not just the newest ones exhibited at the Fondation Cartier. It makes for a far more substantial monograph, larger in scope...Why not? I hope more publishers try something similar. Another interesting feature is a section dedicated to the artists' studio, seeing these near-human creations at the various stages of their construction, limbs and hairless heads scattered about the work area, Mueck carefully inspecting and crafting every detail, like a modern Pygmalion set on building himself a harem of giants and Lilliputians. A great book, one of the best artbooks of the last 12 months.