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Christian Petersen: Sculptor, by Lea Rosson DeLong. Ames: Iowa State
University Press, 2000. xiii, 242 pp. Illustrations, notes, index, catalogue
raisonne. $44.95 cloth.
| Reviewer Greg Olson is an exhibit specialist at the
Missouri State Archives. He holds an M.F.A. in sculpture from the
University of South Dakota and has researched and written about several
historic sculptures and historic sites. |
Produced as the catalog for an ambitious retrospective
exhibit at the Brunnier Art Museum on the Iowa State University campus,
Christian Petersen: Sculptor strives to define the legacy of this largely
overlooked artist and teacher. Perhaps because Petersen was not given to
offering insights into his work, exhibit curator Lea Rosson DeLong has
collected the interpretations of an art historian, the artist's biographer,
an art conservator, Petersen's widow, and two poets to explore the artist's
work and life.
Born in Denmark, Christian Petersen (1885-1961) arrived in Ames in 1934 to
become America's first collegiate artist-in-residence. For the next
quarter-century, Petersen taught art at Iowa State University, where several
of his life-size sculptures now grace the campus.
DeLong's biographical sketch traces the artist's career from his training as
a die cutter in New Jersey in 1900 to his tenure at Iowa
State. Through it all, we see this quiet, introspective artist struggle to
express himself artistically and spiritually as art world tastes shifted
from the neoclassicism of the beaux arts to the modernism of the
international school.
Because of Petersen's use of local imagery, his belief in the cultural
importance of the Midwest, and his brief association with the depression-era
Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), it is tempting to label him a
regionalist. Yet, as art historian Charles C. Eldredge points out in the
catalog's introduction, Petersen's work went beyond regionalism. From the
time he arrived in Iowa, Petersen turned his back on fashion to develop a
personal style. The artist's inspiration seems to have come largely from his
deeply held religious convictions and his wife Charlotte, whom Patricia
Lounsbury Bliss describes as Petersen's muse.
During his years in Ames, Petersen often worked in local materials,
occasionally carving sculpture from Iowa limestone and collaborating with
Paul E. Cox, head of the university's Ceramic Engineering Depart ment, to
create works in clay. Art conservator Linda Merk-Gould's essay, while
weighted with technical information, gives readers a behind-the-scenes look
at the detective work and painstaking attention to detail that went into a
recent project aimed at saving several of these works from the ravages of
time and vandalism.
The inclusion of poems written by Michael Carey and Neal Bowers and inspired
by the work of Christian Petersen emphasizes that, like their maker, these
sculptures do not demand public attention. Peter sen's quiet sculptures are
best experienced where their placement and scale allow viewers to converse
with them one-on-one.
Because the strength of Petersen's work comes from its introverted nature,
making a public case for it is an onerous task. The three-dimensional
intimacy that makes this work meaningful is inherently difficult to capture
between the covers of a book. Given the degree of the challenge DeLong set
for herself, it is disappointing that the end product is marred by the
appearance of having been hastily assembled. Too often, the catalog's poorly
edited text and uninspired graphic design weaken her admirable attempt to
secure a permanent place for Petersen in the canon of American art.
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