In rare forms

Politics, it is said, makes for strange bedfellows. Art, on the other hand, creates truly weird juxtapositions.

Consider the city’s Municipal Services Building Plaza, across from City Hall. There stand a South Philadelphia mayor and a Jacques Lipchitz creation called Government of the People.

Frank Rizzo "bitterly opposed" the placement of Lipchitz’s work in the plaza, but the city’s cultural elite captured the day and, by 1976, Lipchitz was in place, years before Rizzo (at least in statue form) would arrive.

My family and I don’t have much connection with either Mayor Rizzo or Lipchitz. My daughter dubbed the sculpture with the grandiose title, "Humanity: Pile of Turds." She was much younger at the time, but I dare say she hasn’t changed her mind. The Rizzo statue doesn’t have sufficient presence for even a little criticism.

All this comes to mind with a new show of Lipchitz at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, featuring works inside the museum and spotlighting works throughout the city. "Jacques Lipchitz and Philadelphia," designed to explore the long and rich history between the city and the sculptor, runs through Aug. 22, which, fittingly enough, was the artist’s birthday.

Lipchitz was born in Lithuania in 1891 and was trained in the classical manner in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Acad�mie Julian. He was a friend and associate of Picasso, Braque and Gris. He fled Europe in 1941, eventually settling into living and working quarters in Hastings-on-Hudson until his death in 1973. Throughout his career, he was known as the sculptor who translated cubism from paint to bronze.

Besides Government of the People, there is also a major Lipchitz work in Fairmount Park, The Spirit of Enterprise. The sculptor’s connection with Philadelphia dates back to 1922, when Albert Barnes met him in Europe and offered him a commission to embellish what would become the Barnes Foundation with a group of stone bas-reliefs. Lipchitz was hesitant to accept, as he felt his style would not blend well with the work of architect Paul Cret.

But Barnes’ particular interest involved the assemblage of differing art styles, and he was able to convince Lipchitz. An art dealer had introduced Barnes to Lipchitz. Barnes reportedly hadn’t been much impressed by cubism, but wanted to see Lipchitz’s collection of African and oceanic artifacts.

However, Barnes ended up being so impressed by the cubist sculptures that he bought eight of them on the spot. And those Barnes Foundation bas-relief works made Lipchitz famous and established his reputation.

Other Philadelphia art patrons supported Lipchitz and, thus, the museum ended up with several important pieces, including two bronzes — Sailor with Guitar and Woman with Braid — both done in Spain during a trip with Mexican painter Diego Rivera, a friend and mentor.

The exhibition includes some 60 pieces of sculpture and works on paper taken from the museum’s collection and from area collectors. Part of the reason for the show is to display recent gifts of five sculptures — four in plaster and one in terra cotta — by the Jacques and Yulia Lipchitz Foundation in honor of the museum’s 125th anniversary, celebrated last year.

The city has a history of feting Lipchitz. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts featured his work twice. And a 1964 exhibit with a major retrospective selected by Lipchitz himself reportedly cemented him as one of the century’s major sculptors. The artist also was a frequent guest on a national television program, What in the World?, which was broadcast from the University of Pennsylvania.

There never has been a question about the technically superb Lipchitz technique, nor the amount of emotion and passion that has gone into much of his politically motivated work. Also, as demonstrated by this show, not all of his work has the same distinctive style.

The Lipchitz work most often seen by the public is, not surprisingly, the public art. And since the pieces on Kelly Drive, the Municipal Services Building Plaza and the sculpture just outside the Art Museum, Prometheus Strangling the Vulture, all seem similar, it’s easy to categorize Lipchitz.

Still, revisiting the bas-relief work at the Barnes and seeing the museum holdings from the Spanish trip, one is forced to spend more time looking at the artist.

One of the best places to start is with curator Michael Taylor’s essay in a double edition of the museum bulletin that serves as the exhibition catalogue.

Jacques Lipchitz and Philadelphia
Through Aug. 22
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway
215-684-7500
www.philamuseum.org
Adults, $10; seniors (62+), $7; students with valid ID, $7; ages 13-18, $7; 12 and under, free; Sundays, pay what you wish