Gaston Lachaise’s Tools
The tools of the acclaimed sculptor Gaston Lachaise were beautifully installed at the Portland Museum of Art through a generous loan from the Lachaise Foundation as part of the multiyear Your Museum, Reimagined accessibility and collection reinstallation project, which opened to the public in 2017.
A French sculptor who emigrated to the United States in 1906, and eventually settled in Georgetown, Maine, Lachaise worked in a variety of sculptural forms and received widespread recognition for his innovative large-scale representations of the human figure. In the introduction to the catalogue for the exhibition A New American Sculpture, 1914-1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach (on view at the PMA in 2017), curator Andrew Eschelbacher contextualized the work of Lachaise and other sculptors working in Paris under the shadow of Auguste Rodin. Eschelbacher writes, “…artists such as [Aristide] Maillol and Lachaise focused on reducing the animation of the anatomy to create a harmony of line, curve, and volume. In describing the principles behind these artworks, Maillol argued that his sculpture was architecture, created through a balancing of forms rooted in geometrical principles. This equivalency between modern sculpture and architecture became standard in the contemporary discourse.”[1]
Lachaise’s monumental forms indeed endowed the human figure with architectural proportions, and the towering representations of the female body carried specific symbolic resonances. In what is perhaps his most widely known work today, the panel installations at Rockefeller Center, human figures are visibly equated with towering buildings and adorn the façade of one of New York City’s landmarks. But the monumentality of these figures persists in free-standing sculptures as well, where Lachaise experimented with balance and proportion across multiple media.
Gaston Lachaise (United States b. France), Garden Figure, 1935, concrete, 80 x 28 x 12 inches. Gift of the estate of Isabel Lachaise, 1964.36
In his representations of the nude female body, Lachaise turned to a conventional subject in the history of art, with a modern twist. Describing Lachaise’s Standing Woman, curator Shirley Reece-Hughes writes, “The sculpture astonished the critics, who unanimously praised Lachaise’s vision of new womanhood, remarking that the work alluded to everything from a powerful pioneer woman to a female enchantress. With one hip slightly higher than the other, and her curvaceous torso appearing disproportionately larger than her slender ankles and feet, the figure seems precariously balanced on her tiptoes.”[2] This description is also applicable to Garden Figure, in the collection of the PMA, in which the large, fleshy torso and hips appear to extend beyond the sculpture’s base, where narrow feet ground the human figure. Such representations allowed Lachaise to make his mark on a subject dating back to ancient Greece and Rome, while bringing a decidedly modern attention to materials and challenging public expectations with raw, frank depictions.
For a few more weeks, visitors to the PMA will have the amazing opportunity to view the tools Lachaise used in the fabrication of his works. For more information, Paula Hornbostel, Director of the Lachaise Foundation produced a video highlighting the tools and discussing Lachaise’s sculptural practice in detail.
- Shalini Le Gall, Chief Curator, Susan Donnell and Harry W. Konkel Curator of European Art, Director of Academic Engagement
[1] Andrew J. Eschelbacher, A New American Sculpture, 1914-1945: Lachaise, Laurent, Nadelman, and Zorach, exhibition catalog, Portland Museum of Art, Amon Carter Museum of American Art (New Haven: Yale, UP, 2017), 6.
[2] Shirley Reece-Hughes, “Embracing American Folk,” in A New American Sculpture, 1914-1945, 30.