It Speaks to Me: Alison Saar on Hermann Scherer’s ‘Sleeping Woman With Boy’ at LACMA

This piece, part of the Expressionist collection at LACMA, was pivotal early on in my choice to become a sculptor, giving me the freedom not to be overly concerned with realism and technique. Initially the work seems ghoulish — the coloring, the contortion of the figures, the mother’s arm, which is twisted up in such a way it looks broken. Her neck looks broken too. The piece feels very pained, until you think of the artist working within the confines of the original wood log. I love that the sculpture reflects its genesis — the shape of the log, the mark of the chisels. Now that I’m a mother, I also think of times when you are so dead tired, you grab your kid and you fall asleep together. In that respect I see the work as less painful and more peaceful.

—Alison Saar, as told to Jori Finkel

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Image: Hermann A. Scherer's "Sleeping Woman with Boy," 1926; painted wood. Gift of Anna Bing Arnold. Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

It Speaks to Me: Lari Pittman on Henri Matisse's 'The Black Shawl' at the Norton Simon

This week Culture Monster is introducing a new feature, asking a local artist to discuss a work from a local museum that means something to him or her. Our first artist is painter Lari Pittman.

 

This painting has a physical muscularity that we don’t always associate with Matisse. There’s a perception of his work as a type of “lite” decoration, but here — as in the recent MOMA show — he is a rather ruthless painter. Look at the lace, which a Dutch Master would have approached very differently. Matisse almost claws at the lace — he drags and stabs the brush. There’s a roughness to the surface that contradicts the traditional bourgeois subject. I think the painting feels very contemporary, with the figure serving as an armature for color, pattern, texture, movement, transparency, opacity. For me the painting is not about the woman but about that tornado of a dress. I probably visit it three times a year.

--Lari Pittman, as told to Jori Finkel

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Image: Henri Matisse's "The Black Shawl (Lorette VII)," 1918; Oil on canvas. Norton Simon Art Foundation, Gift of Mr. Norton Simon. © 2010 Succession H. Matisse, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York