SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1953 T HE MICHIGAN DAILY PAGE _THRE1t I RACKHAM SHOW: McClure Sculptures Display Wide Range. By STUART ROSS One of the men of a four-man show at the Rackham Galleries, Tom McLure, displays a group of sculptures ranging in size from' ten inches to ten feet, in material from steel to alabaster, and in conception from lovingly intimate to monumentally grandiose. * * v PERHAPS the best thing about this sculptor's work is that there is never any equivocation as to his emotional stand in regard to the theme of a piece. He is either be- Ing humorous or satirical or senti- mental or grotesque, and the hu- mor or satire or sentiment or gro- tesquerie are inherent in the very forms themselves. Even the ma- terial of the work begins to take on the feeling; cold steel can be very satirical, smooth grey marble very sentimental. "St. Francis' Arm" is a large steel construction depicting a knight-like character carrying the severed extremity on high in an elaborate receptacle. Des- pitethe tradition of the theme, or maybe because of it, there is nothing religious about the work. Somehow it's funny. The treatment of the forms is almost cartoon treatment. There is a wonderful play of piddling de- tail against big forms, of big 7 forms against open spaces. The whole thing is a delicate balanc- ing of sharply defined forms. In a similarly humorous mood, but of a more satirical nature, is a piece in steel and brass called "General", to me one of the best in the show. The General is of the fat, cigar-smoking, whipcord riding britches type, replete with a chestfull of medals and, the crowning touch, a mouth that opens and closes on a swivel, pup- pet style. McLure displays in this piece his knack 'for rendering re- cognizable detail into the totality of what is essentially an abstract whole. We see clearly every me- dal on the generals chest, the ci- gar poised delicately between two, fingers, and yet these objects, for all their recognizability, are per- fectly integrated formally with even the most abstract parts of the work. ON A MORE intimate scale is the small bronze "Running Boy", a ten inch figure crammed with a kind of quiet writhing energy that ... ... . .......::4;-.. -.:-. v ::: v'":?? ii:.:. ;.. ":v :: ... i.i . {. r ....... ...... ..... .. .. ... . ..... . . . . .. . . ... :.. .. .. . ...: . . .: .: ::: :: :{ iL' i"i :- :: : ? :i?? ??. :i= ":i i r :> : :::: ~ :> :: r-L ..:?.:::.::i ..........:.:. .:.i: }: j i.' ' ' * .- .. 'FC .. .. .. ... .. ... . . ... .. .. .. . ... .: .. .: .. . :- :: .. ..- .. .. i i ':". v ,'i::: :-? ;"::,: :ii:i ? . .. {4 ::..............' ARTIST'S VIEW-'Prof. Chet La More takes a whimsical look at the four man show at Rackham j Galleries. Left to right are an oil by Jack Garbutt, another oil by La More, a piece of sculpture by jProf. Thomas McClure and a vase by J. T. Abernathy. All men are members of the architecture and j design school faculty. Graphic Art Of Picasso Shown Here "A Half Century of Picasso," an exhibition of Picasso's graphicl art is currently on view at the Museum of Art. The 77 prints which were recent- ly shown in the Museum of Mo- dern Art, New York, range in date from an etching, "The Frugal Re- past," dated 1909 to "The Depar- ture" of 1951. Including a wide variety of subjects, the prints range from circus clowns and acrobats, still lifes, bullfights and pastorals to illustrations for books by Ovid and Balsac. One of his major works "Mino- tauromachy" is considered as be- ing the most important print of the 20th century. Picasso's brilliant etchings and lithographs mirror closely the suc- cessive phases of his paintings-- from the "Blue Period" and the researchers of Cubism to the Guer- nica mural and the recent Antibes pastorals. The lithographs date from 1945 when, at the age of 64, he began to experiment in the medium. The exhibition is open from 9 to 5 weekdays and from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sundays through Dec. 20, "The Statesmanship of the Civil War" by Allan Nevins, 82 pgs.; Macmillan Co. by HARRY STRAUSS In "The Statesmanship of the Civil War," Allan Nevins offers a new analysis of the War Between the States, as well as of the lead- ers on both sides: Davis and Lin- coln. The paramount need of leaders, in peace and war, is the power to discern the tenor of the people, Nevins says. He must not only be a leader, of ability and character, but he must bear a constructive relation to any emer- gent force in his era. It is these' qualities, or lack of them that separated Davis and Lincoln, and that made "the statesmanship of the Revolutionary era ... so much more impressive than the states- manship of the Civil War era.. ." Each side had a different fundamental reason for waging war: one to preserve a nation, the other to make a nation. The cardinal test of Southern statesmanshiphwhich Nevins uses to measure the achievement of Davis and his colleagues lies in the question: "How much, over and beyond the prosecution of the war, did their ideas, policies, and acts do to create a nation?" ability to combine war and ad-I ministrative power. Nevins be- lieves that Lincoln's great dexter- ity in managing both his associates and the mass opinion of the coun- try far outshadowed any mis- takes he made; he knew it was a political war and carried it as such: "Lincoln never once spoke' unkindly of the Southern people." Lincoln was more than a statesman, declares Nevins. Hu- manitarian, preserver of demo- cracy, and worrier over all the peoples in the States and terri- tories, Lincoln was impassioned with the belief that the preser- vation of the Union was manda- tory and primary; the slavery questioned he believed, as does Nevins, would have been resolv- ed, or have resolved itself in due time. The pictures of the South's Dav- is, his greatness and his weak- nesses, as presented by Columbia's Prof. Nevins, is rare among writ- ers nowadays. The remarks are brief and lucid and direct. This is also true in the notations deal- ing with Lipcoln, except in some instances when Nevins' obvious great admiration for him comes through the otherwise concise and impartial reasoning of a complex situation. Civil War Book Reviewed .............. 0 iI r THE ANN ARBOR CHILDREN'S THEATER offers its first production tt "TA 194pucklin9 adapted from Hans Christian Anderson BY RICHARD McKELVEY THE ARTS THEATER 2091 E. Washington Li Sat., Dec. 5 3:00 P.M. Sun., Dec. 6 2:00 P.M. Sun., Dec. 6 4:00 P.M. Admission 75c NO 8-7301 II I 1 seems to burst from the confines of its size. In contrast to the works in metal is the lyric quality of those in wood and stone. "Cradle" in alabaster, and "Deimos" in grey marble are full of a deli- cacy of expression and the sub- tlety of half-hidden forms. The few works in ceramic to'j subject and material, of material me come off less well than the rest, possibly because the material has a quality somewhere between' the soft finish of stone and the studied textural roughness of me- tal. Metal and stone dictate their formal terms to McLure, who ini turn achieves the fullest union of and forms. He does not work in large monu- mental sweeps; rather his work is a neat and precarious piling up of careful shapes on careful spaces, a consistent set of ab- stract forms that hover .between stability and flight. Stanley Quartet To Feature Finney Composition at Second Fall Concert The second fall semester con- cert by the Stanley Quartet will be presented -at 8:30 p.m. Tues- day in the Rackham Lecture Hall. Guest soloist with the four musi- cians will be Prof. Marian Owen of the School of Music performing at the piano. BUY AT State Street at North University VIOLINISTS Prof. Gilbert Ross and Prof. Emil Raab, cellist, Prof. Oliver Edel and Prof. Robert Courte, violist, make up the quar- tet. Featured number in the con- cert will be the second local per- formance of Prof. Ross Lee Finney's composition "Quintet (1953) ". The quintet was first performed in a summer series concert by the Quartet and Mrs. Owen, Describing the composition for string quartet and piano,, Prof. Finney says "A new work is al- ways a new experience. The musi- cal gestures-the meanings-are always different and always de- CHRISTMAS CARDS NOTES and STATIONERY Overbeck Bookstore 1216 South University Ann Arbor, Michgian velop from the musical sounds in the composer's head that started the composition in the first place." * * * EXPLAINING this .curious phen- omenon of "head sounds", Prof. Finney goes on: "The musical sound in the head that started my Piano Quintet was a piling up of mass of sonority. It was not a melody nor a rhythm nor even a simple chord, but rather an in- creasingly tense accumulation of sound that added new disson- ances as old ones faded out. This sound in the head bothered me, puzzled me, and literally torment- ed me until I found what seemed to me its musical meaning." Prof. Finney has composed other numbers for string en- sembles, but this is his only piano quintet to date. At the present time he is completing the "Third Violin Sonata", be- ing written especially for Prof. Emil Raab and Prof. Benning Dexter of the music school. Other numbers to be performed at the concert include Beethoven's Quartet in C minor and Mozart's Quartet in B-flat major. The program will be open to the public without charge. 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