Richard Bertman: The Sculptures
For over 50 years Richard Bertman has been sculpting, drawing, and leading an architectural practice. Gradually assembling a lifetime's work, Bertman's sculptural creations encompass over 100 works from five decades. The sculptures bear testimony to a boundless energy and the creativity of a Renaissance man, both an artist and a renowned architect. Christina Lanzl, the author of this catalogue raisonné, delves into process, meaning and interpretation of Bertman's sculptures, shedding light on his creative practice and analyzing each work, while also listening to the artist's voice. He is best known for his whimsical mechanical sculptures. Man, and machine are Bertman's central foci, resulting in two major groupings: kinetic objects primarily activated by electric motors and figurative portraits made from bent wire, welded steel rod, or carved in wood. Complementing these are the early abstract sculptures as well as explorations in other materials, such as copper, bronze or the incorporation of appropriated items from found objects. | Book Talks Book Launch at the MIT Museum On Wednesday, June 19, 2019 the MIT Museum hosted the book launch of Richard Bertman: The Sculptures by Christina Lanzl. She was joined by Richard Bertman, artist and co-founder of CBT Architects, and Mark Jarzombek, author of the foreword, professor at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and the curator of the concurrent exhibition, Drawing, Designing, Thinking: 150 Years of Teaching Architecture at MIT. The trio of Richard Bertman, Mark Jarzombek and Christina Lanzl led a conversation on the creative synergy between architecture and sculpture, the making and meaning of Bertman’s kinetic objects, wire sculptures and other works. Many of Bertman's works contain an element of humor, which offered opportunity for exploration. MIT Museum | Book launch 265 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA Wednesday, June 19, 2019 | 6 p.m. BSA Space | BSA Placemaking Network 270 Congress Street, Boston Monday, September 23, 2019 | 6 p.m. 40th Annual Fort Point Open Studios 300 Summer Street | Studio 23, 2nd floor Sunday, October 20, 2019 | 4 p.m Published by Images Publishing + Peleus Press, Richard Bertman: The Sculptures, is available for purchase in the MIT Museum Store. Hardcover. Order the book on Amazon. |
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Save the Harbor / Save the Bay bestowed its annual Boston Harbor Heroes awards at a gala evening held in the grand ballroom of the Seaport Hotel on March 29, 2018. Among others, the South Bay Harbor Trail Coalition was honored for its "vision, tenacity and commitment to connecting Boston's neighborhoods to Boston Harbor and each other." Under the leadership of coalition founder, Michael Tyrrell, the team of David Giangrande, Christina Lanzl, Ann McQueen, Tom Parks, the late Bill Pressley and his wife Marion, Candelaria Silva and Bob Wells envisioned the South Bay Harbor Trail (SBHT) as part of a larger trail network that connects the Southwest Corridor Park from Jamaica Plain to the Boston Harborwalk downtown and in South Boston. Buoys salvaged and reconditioned by the US Coast Guard serve as markers and a playful reminder of Boston's rich maritime history. Main goal is to reconnect communities divided by major traffic arteries via an easily accessible, multi-use bicycle and pedestrian path. The first of a series of SBHT Buoys was dedicated along the Harborwalk in Fort Point Channel in November 2008. Funding for public art planning along the trail was provided by the Edward Ingersoll Browne Trust Fund of the City of Boston. Other funders include the ISTEA program, MassDOT, the New England Foundation for the Arts as well as private donors. Overall construction of the SBHT is underway as of spring 2018.
About the South Bay Harbor Trail The South Bay Harbor Trail Coalition, in partnership with Save the Harbor / Save the Bay, municipal and state agencies, partnered to plan and build the 3.5 mile-long, multi-use South Bay Harbor Trail which, when completed, will connect Roxbury, the South End, Chinatown, Fort Point Channel and South Boston to each other and to Boston Harbor. The South Bay Harbor Trail is one of the most important and exciting initiatives in the city connecting our inland neighborhoods to Boston Harbor. The Trail will link people to the recreational resources of a revitalized Boston Harbor and to the economic opportunities of a prospering waterfront. Residents from Boston’s diverse neighborhoods will have the opportunity to share in a cultural exchange. The South Bay Harbor Trail will provide an important link in the larger transportation network by connecting with existing streets and trails such as the Southwest Corridor and Melnea Cass Boulevard. It will also serve as a critical link in a citywide greenway, connecting trails from Fenway, the Southwest Corridor, Charles River Park, Broadway Bridge, Fort Point Channel and the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The South Bay Harbor Trail Coalition includes community groups, environmental organizations, the City of Boston, property owners, developers, and residents. It is governed by a steering committee which is comprised of coalition members representing every neighborhood through which the Trail will pass. The Coalition receives organizational, fundraising, and technical assistance from Save the Harbor/Save the Bay. The Coalition worked together with Pressley Associates, a Cambridge-based landscape architecture firm, and Design Consultants Inc., a Somerville-based engineering firm, to develop the engineering and design master plans that will link various completed segments of the trail into a contiguous, single trail system/experience. by Christina Lanzl
Richard J. Bertman’s oeuvre encompasses fifty years of sculptures in welded steel, wire, fabric and carved wood as well as pen-and-ink drawings. His studio work is complemented by a distinguished career in architecture as founding principal of CBT Inc., a Boston firm of international stature co-founded by Bertman, Maurice Childs and Charles Tseckares in 1967. Bertman was educated at Harvard University (B.A. 1956), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.Arch. 1961), and the University of California at Berkeley (M.Arch. 1965). As an artist, Richard Bertman is best known for his whimsical mechanical sculptures. He has also created several hundred exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of architectural icons he drew locally and on travels around the globe. Bertman began sculpting during his graduate studies at Berkeley. Early pieces were exhibited at the University of California’s Worth Ryder Museum in 1965, and as part of the “Search for Young Talent” juried surveys sponsored by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 1966/67, at the Fitchburg, Framingham, and Worcester Art Museums. The effort of starting and developing an architecture practice resulted in his working privately for many years but in 1988 he began exhibiting his work again. Solo shows were mounted by the MIT Museum (1990), Boston’s St. Botolph Club (1995), and by the Boston Center for the Arts (2010), among other venues. Though the human form has been Bertman’s focus, his work ranges from figurative to abstract. Particularly the early, small-scale sculptures appear like three-dimensional spatial drawings. His early, abstract works show the influence of abstract expressionist sculptor David Smith and surrealist Alberto Giacometti, particularly the latter’s concern with the figure in space, as in Metamorphosis (1965) (Ill. 1). The early cubist forms of modest scale are clustered assemblies of steel rods in parallel arrangement, suspending form in a spatial framework. In the 1980s, Bertman removed the exterior frameworks. The resulting, figurative wire sculptures of heads portray the artist’s immediate family and personal friends. Facial features evolve from minimalist wire constructions, using bent strands of wire to create form. The portrait series in bent wire or welded steel rod include likenesses of well-known Bostonians, such as patrons of the arts, Sandy and David Bakalar (1994) (Ill. 2), Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell (1997), developer and known art collector Bruce Beal (1998), as well as former Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis and his wife Kitty (2009). Also in the 1980s, Bertman began creating his first kinetic sculptures, with movement driven either by hand or by an electric motor. The mechanical works were preceded by first experiments with moving parts during the mid-1960s. Humor often is an element of the artist’s mature kinetic sculptures, evidencing his wit, and inviting us to ponder the bright side of life while speaking to the humanity in us all. Rainmaker (1985) is a bicycle-like contraption with a series of mechanical and twisting components that pokes fun at our superstitions. A humorous self-portrait called Worried Man (Ill. 3) follows in 1989. This piece is both a self-portrait – a wire sculpture – and introduces a kinetic and a sound component. Worried Man’s face, limited to eyes, nose and mouth, is mounted on a white box that contains an electric motor and a tape recorder. At the push of a button, the facial features move, performing the “Worried Man Blues” recorded by the artist himself. Another wall-mounted wire sculpture, Marriage (1990) (Ill. 4), features a couple's babbling conversation, similar to Worried Man. Both works are humorous commentaries on everyday life. An increase in scale marks the mature works of the 1990s and later. Bertman took up wood carving for his eight-foot tall Family Portrait (1991) (Ill. 5), a whimsical abstraction of his family inspired by Native American totem poles he encountered traveling in the Pacific Northwest. Continually introducing a broader range of materials and more technical feats, the mechanical sculpture, First Attempts at a Bionic Man (1994, revised 2009) (Ill. 6), consists of a life-size figure suspended in a steel frame. Motion is activated by the push of a button that brings the silver-painted wood sculpture to life, as the exposed wires and pulleys are activated through an electrical motor. This “contraption”, as the artist affectionately refers to his mechanical sculptures, visualizes movement on two parallel tracks, first, utilizing the limbs and head, and second, in the series of levers clearly visible behind the figure. The mechanics are deliberately exposed, unlike those of his earlier Worried Man. First Attempts at a Bionic Man is both funny and a sardonic reference to constraints, technology and progress. Other major kinetic sculptures are Searching for Leonardo (2002) (Ill. 7), Fish (2004), Hootchy Kootchy (2005), Contraption (2007) and Symphony #1 (2011). Bertman references concepts like movement, space and flight in the form of humans, animals and machines. Searching for Leonardo (Ill. 7) was inspired by Leonardo DaVinci’s renderings of flying machines, which Bertman animates through an electric motor activated by a foot switch, offering the user control in an interactive gesture. In addition, by exposing mechanical parts to the viewer, motion becomes transparent and accessible. This way, the creator also becomes educator, broadening our understanding of technology and science with a touch of comedy and magic. This interest continues to inspire Bertman’s latest studio project of a mechanical drum set in his continued path of artistic inquiry. |
Urban Culture Institute
The Urban Culture Institute Archives
May 2021
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