RONALD BLADEN

SCULPTURE OF THE 1960S & 1970S

Black Lightning, (Monumental)1981, Painted aluminum288 x 720 x 58 inchesEdition of 3Seattle Center Sculpture GardenSeattle, Washington

RONALD BLADENSCULPTURE OF THE 1960S & 1970S

MONUMENTAL & GARDEN SCALE OUTDOOR SCULPTURE

33 EAST 68TH STREET NEW YORK, NY 10065212 570-2362 GALLERY@JACOBSONHOWARD.COM

ESSAY BY IRVING SANDLER

WORKING MODELS & RELATED DRAWINGS

As a young man Ronald Bladen was a mem-

ber of a group of anarcho-pacifist artists, writers

and musicians, among them Kenneth Rexroth,

Robert Duncan and Philip Lamantia, who formed

the Liberation Circle. The radical attitudes Bladen

developed then continued to inform his life and

art. The Abstract Expressionist painter Barnett

Newman, a fellow anarchist, wrote that anarchists

are “intoxicated with the love of personal free-

dom,” embracing above all “the autonomy of the

Individual.”1 He also wrote, “Only those are free

who are free from the values of the establishment.

And that’s what anarchism is all about.”2 Bladen

rarely talked about his political beliefs, but he sub-

scribed to these axioms. An independent spirit who

refused to bow to art world powers and their de-

mands, he was the exemplary artist to a wide circle

of painters and sculptors.

Prior to becoming a sculptor in the early 1960s,

Bladen had painted lyrical Abstract Expressionist

canvases, avant-garde at the time. Composed of

heavily painted organic forms that protrude into

space, they “brought me off the wall,” as he said.

Then, in 1960, he rejected organic forms as too

commonplace and built a number of large plywood

bas-reliefs whose projecting plank-like components

were elementary “letter” forms, for example, an

inverted C or an L. His next move was to create

monumental Minimalist sculptures in the round.

His intention in the work was, as he said, “to push

abstract art a little bit further [past the prevailing

open construction-sculpture] but not lose the po-

etry.” He also added, “I desired something in the

grand manner since I’m still romantic.”

Bladen has often been linked to Donald Judd

and Robert Morris, who might be termed hard-core

Minimalists. But he was very different. He rejected

their anti-romantic attitude and what they termed

“anti-anthropomorphism,” that is, their purging

of any sign of the human body and its gestures.

Bladen’s romanticism and humanity are evident in

a work titled Three Elements (1966), composed of

a row of three free-standing, nine-foot high, rhom-

boid-like monoliths, each tilted so as to appear

precariously balanced, and painted black with the

outer diagonal side sheathed in aluminum.

Three Elements was exhibited that year in

Primary Structures, a comprehensive survey of

RONALD BLADEN by Irving Sandler

Three Elements (Garden)1966, Painted wood, aluminum 112 x 48 x 21 inchesEdition of 3 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

2

Minimal Art, at the Jewish Museum. The exhibi-

tion was characterized by sculptor Mark di Suvero

as “the keystone show of the 1960s [which] in-

troduced a new generation of sculptors.” Three

Elements stood out; it literally made the art world

look up. Di Suvero singled out Bladen’s work as

“the one great piece in the show. It expands our

idea of scale and changes our knowledge of space.

It is radiant.”3 Di Suvero was right. Bladen’s sculp-

ture had an astonishing presence, which, as Alex

Katz quipped, “assassinated” its neighbors.

If Three Elements was Minimalist in appear-

ance, it was anything but anti-romantic and anti-

anthropomorphic in spirit. The diagonal of the gi-

ant volumes is reminiscent of a human gesture,

at once epic and grand, like the backward lean of

Rodin’s Balzac, and vulnerable, suggesting falling

or bowing. The three forms can also be viewed as

a grand procession—anthropomorphic menhirs on

the move.

Three Elements was one of a number of ma-

jestic, elemental pieces that made the art world

pay attention. In each, Bladen took a new spatial

idea—such as a unitary mass, a volume in extend-

ed space, sculpture as field, or as line—and devel-

oped it in a spectacular manner. In Black Triangle

(1966-67), he inverted a triangular volume 9 feet

four inches high, 10 feet long, and 13 feet across

the top. Poising it on its vertex, he overturned the

usual expectations of how the sculpture ought to

sit. Indeed, the form calls as much attention to

the space it activates as to its massiveness. The

22-foot high X (1967-68) almost overwhelmed

the great hall of Washington’s Corcoran Gallery

of Art in which it was installed. In Black

Lightning (1981), a 24-foot high zig-

zag line points upward—to the ineffable

sublime—like an upward index finger

in Christian art—a trajectory that is

breath-taking.

Bladen’s sculptures may look mini-

mal on the outside but internally they

are complex. His simple forms have an

elaborate but concealed infrastructure,

whose construction is seen in the struc-

tural model for Coltrane (1970). To my

knowledge, Bladen never explained why

he devoted so much of his time and

energy building frameworks that were

not only invisible but were in fact struc-

turally unnecessary. It may be that he

thought that his forms had to be found

in the process of artistic-making, that is

earned, a carryover from his Abstract

Expressionist upbringing.

Much as Bladen was occupied with

volume, he was also absorbed by light.

In different pieces, he used reflective

lacquers, aluminum coating, semi-gloss

blacks and metal skins. Indeed, from

1982 to 1988, the year of his death at the age of

69, light became the essential “form” of a series

of pieces. In these sculptures, elaborate painted

wood frameworks are the “substructures” for

curved, polished aluminum sheets that trap light

as they reflect it, the reflections seeming to signal

cosmic space with earthly luminescence.

At the same time that Bladen was construct-

ing his light pieces he was creating small works

that had been or might have become models for

huge pieces had he lived. But in their own right,

they are fully resolved works. Bladen invented a

rich variety of volumes and shapes. Many of these

works are based on the upward aspiring diagonal,

the heroic diagonal—a metaphor for transcen-

dence, as in Cathedral Evening (1971), Flying

Fortress (Maquette), (1974-78), Host of the Ellipse

(Garden), (1979) and Black Lightning (1981). A re-

lated work, Light Year (1979), thrusts forward as if

preparing to soar. His intention in these sculptures,

which is evident even in the small models, was, as

he said, “to reach that area of excitement belong-

ing to natural phenomena such as if a gigantic

wave poised before it makes its fall. . . . The drama

is best described as awesome or breathtaking.”4

Bladen’s humane variant of Minimalism extended

its range in fresh and dramatic directions.

1. Barnett Newman, “The True Revolution Is Anarchist,”

p. 45. The phrase is Herzen’s.

2. Barnett Newman, “The True Revolution Is Anarchist!”

Foreward to Memoirs of a Revolutionist by Peter Kropotkin, in

Barnett Newman, Selected Writings, pp. 50-51.

3. Symposium on Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum, May

2, 1966, with Kynaston McShine, Barbara Rose, Robert Morris,

Donald Judd, and Mark di Suvero.

4. Barbara Rose, “ABC Art,” Art in America, October-November

1965, p. 63.

clockwise:The Sentinels, (Model)1972, Painted wood8 x 9 x 7 inches eachEdition 2 of 3

Coltrane, (Structural Model) 1970, Wood 30 x 171/2 x 171/2 inchesUnique

Flying Fortress, (Maquette)1974-78Painted cardboard111/2 x 33 x 27/8 inchesUnique

3

Cathedral Evening, (Monumental)1971, Painted aluminum118 x 354 x 283 inchesEdition of 3As shown during the exhibition Ronald Bladen Sculpture: Works from the Marzona Collection, Nationalgalerie Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 2007

4

Black Tower, (Model)1986, Painted wood331/2 x 40 x 27 inchesEdition 1 of 3

Raiko, (Model)1973, Painted wood201/2 x 54 x 8 inchesEdition 2 of 3

6

Light Year, (Garden)1979, Painted aluminum

80 x 156 x 19 inchesEdition of 3

SELECTED PUBLIC EXHIBITIONS

1956 Paintings by Ronald Bladen, Fine

Art Gallery, University of British

Columbia, Vancouver, BC

1965 Concrete Expressionism, Loeb Student

Center, New York University,

New York, NY

1966 Primary Structures. Younger American

and British Sculptors, The Jewish

Museum, New York, NY

1966-67 Annual Exhibition 1966,

Contemporary American Sculpture

and Prints, Whitney Museum of

American Art, New York, NY

1967 Ronald Bladen: Sculpture, Emily

Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University,

Hempstead, NY

Bladen, Grosvenor, von Schlegell, Loeb

Student Center, New York University,

New York, NY

American Sculpture of the Sixties, Los

Angeles County Museum of Art, Los

Angeles, CA, traveling to Philadelphia

Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA

Structural Art, American Federation of

Art, New York, NY, traveling

Rejective Art, University of Omaha,

Fine Arts Festival, Omaha, NE

Guggenheim International Exhibition,

1967: Sculpture from Twenty Nations,

The Solomon R Guggenheim

Museum, New York, NY

1967-68 Scale as Content: Ronald Bladen,

Barnett Newman, Tony Smith, The

Corcoran Gallery of Art,

Washington DC

1968 documenta 4, Kassel, Germany

Minimal Art (Andre, Bladen,

Flavin, Grosvenor, Judd, LeWitt,

Morris, Smith, Smithson, Steiner)

Gmeentemuseum, The Hague, The

Netherlands, traveling to: Städtische

Kunsthalle und Kunstverein für

die Rheinlande und Westfalen,

Düsseldorf; Akademie der Künste,

Berlin

Annual Exhibition 1968, Contemporary

American Sculpture, Whitney Museum

of American Art, New York, NY

1969 14 Sculptors: The Industrial Edge, The

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN

1970 American Sculpture, Sheldon

Memorial Art Gallery, The University

of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE

1972 Ronald Bladen and Allan d’Arcangelo,

Elvehjem Art Center, University of

Wisconsin, Madison, WI

1973 Biennial Exhibition: Contemporary

American Art, Whitney Museum of

American Art, New York, NY

Art in Space: Some Turning Points, The

Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI

1974 Less is More: The Influence of the

Bauhaus on American Art, Lowe Art

Museum, University of Miami, Coral

Gables, FL, traveling to the New York

Cultural Center, New York, NY

1975 The Martha Jackson Collection at the

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Albright-

Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1976 200 Years of American Sculpture,

Whitney Museum of American Art,

New York, NY

The Golden Door: Artist-Immigrants

of America 1876-1976, Hirshhorn

Museum and Sculpture Garden,

Washington, DC

1977 Project: New Urban Monuments,

Akron Art Institute, Akron, OH

1979 The Minimal Tradition, Aldrich

Museum of Contemporary Art,

Ridgefield, CT

Contemporary Sculpture: Selections

from the Museum of Modern Art,

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

1986 Sculpture on the Wall, The Aldrich

Museum of Contemporary Art,

Ridgefield, CT

1991 Ronald Bladen: Early and Late, San

Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San

Francisco, CA, traveling to Vancouver

Art Museum, Vancouver, BC

1995 Ronald Bladen: Drawings and

Sculptural Models, Weatherspoon

Art Gallery, The University of North

Carolina, Greensboro, NC, traveling to

Sculpture Center, New York, NY

Beat Culture and the New America:

1950–1965, Whitney Museum

of American Art, New York, NY,

traveling to: The Walker Art Center,

Minneapolis, MN; MH deYoung

Memorial Museum, Fine Arts

Museum of San Francisco, San

Francisco, CA

1996 The San Francisco School of Abstract

Expressionism, Laguna Art Museum,

Los Angeles, CA, traveling to San

Francisco Museum of Modern Art,

San Francisco, CA

1998 Ronald Bladen Sculpture, Kunsthalle

Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany

1999 Ronald Bladen: Selected Works, PS1/

MoMA Contemporary Art Center,

Long Island City, NY

2000 „Kontrapunkt“, Werke von Nam June

Paik and Ronald Bladen, RWE-Turm,

Essen, Germany

2004 A Minimal Future? Art as Object.

1958-1968, The Museum of

Contemporary Art Los Angeles,

Los Angeles, CA

2007 Ronald Bladen-Skulptur. Werke der

Sammlung Marzona, Staatliche

Museen zu Berlin, Neue National-

galerie, Berlin, Germany

front cover: X, (Monumental) 1967–1968, Painted aluminum, 264 x 288 x 168 inches, Edition of 3. As shown during the exhibition Scale as Content at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1967. Corcoran Gallery of Art Archives.

This catalogue published on the

occasion of the exhibition

RONALD BLADEN

Sculpture of the 1960s & 1970s

Monumental & Garden Outdoor Sculpture

Working Models & Related Drawings

October 16 to November 26, 2008

Jacobson Howard Gallery

33 East 68th Street

New York, NY 10065

212-570-2362

gallery@jacobsonhoward.com

page 1: Ronald Bladen at The Walker

Center, Minneapolis, MN, 1969

page 9: photo by Ellen Page Wilson

Catalogue designed by ADT

back cover: Ronald Bladen beside museum staff during the construction of X, 1967. Scale as Content, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1967.

8

Host of the Ellipse, (Monumental)1981, Painted aluminum

Edition of 3420 x 756 x 96 inches

Baltimore