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Lot Essay
Boy is a classic example of Charles Ray's art. Like many of Ray's greatest works, this piece touches on a complex network of associations both personal and public, aesthetic and autobiographical. Boy is a monument, but one of a new kind; it is not celebratory but ironic and challenging. Typical of Ray's sculptures, it probes fundamental questions about the relation of art and realism; and, at the same time, it is tinged with neo-surrealist memories of childhood and the family romance.
Since antiquity, mimesis has been understood as one of the principal foundations of art. Even in the twentieth century, with the advent of abstraction, realism is still widely held as a goal. Many key modern artists have called themselves realists, including Picasso, Mondrian, Magritte and Ryman--painters who depart significantly from the traditional boundaries of representational art. In the twentieth century, much of "realist" art typically focuses on the depiction of essence rather than appearance.
But Charles Ray's representational sculptures fit neither traditional nor modern conceptions of mimesis. While his works may initially appear simple and straightforward, on further examination inevitably they are alarming and disturbing. Ray's representational works tend to be either false copies (Yes and No most notably) or copies of copies (Male Mannequin and Fall, for example), or both. Either way, they occlude the ideal transparency of realist art. That is to say, Ray's works proclaim their own artificiality and unnaturalness, not their proximity to the original. They are seemingly perfect simulacra, but without essence. They are uninhabited shells, abandoned houses. It is this quality that gives them their eerie ghostliness.
Boy, too, is a copy of a copy. It is a sculpture based on a mannequin based on a boy. The fundamental and universal power of sculpture is that it is a physical presence, not a mere figment like a painting. It is for this reason that sculpture is more often thought to be alive in some magical sense. The worldover, sculpture more often serves as the focus of religious ritual; and during times of social, political or religious upheaval, it is sculpture, not painting, that suffers more from the ravages of iconoclasm. The essential vitality of sculpture has been brilliantly described by Johann Gottfried Herder in his fundamental essay on aesthetics, Plastik (1778): "Sculpture is Truth, painting is Dream. A statue can embrace me; I can kneel before it and become its friend and companion, it is present, it is there. The most beautiful painting is a romance, a dream of a dream" (quoted in J. Hall, The World as Sculpture, London 1999, p. 92).
But Boy is a sculpture of a mannequin, not of a boy; and the idea of a live mannequin is frightening, the subject of a horror movie. The scale of Boy reinforces its threatening character. Oversized, it tends to reduce the viewer to a child; and it is children who most readily image that dolls and other simulacra might come to life. As Freud has stated, "In their early games children do not distinguish at all sharply between living and inanimate objects, and they are especially fond of treating dolls like living people" (S. Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" Penguin Freud Library, vol. 14, p. 355).
In conversation with Robert Storr, Ray has discussed how some of these issues affect Boy and his other sculptures based on mannequins: "Sears wrote a manual to help [its] mannequin sculptors and sculptresses with things like the proportions of legs to fingers. It's an approach called the Sears Standard. The manual says that a mannequin should never look at you, or it seems to be haunted. If it has eye contact with you, you can't project into it because it turns into its own person... Also it should never smile, or else it becomes demonic; but a child mannequin is allowed to smile" (R. Storr, "Anxious Spaces," Art in America, November 1988, p. 103). Ray further explained that Boy smiles "because he's a child mannequin" (ibid.).
At 71½ inches, Boy is the same height as the artist, and the piece therefore seems to be self-referential, perhaps even a kind of altered self-portrait. The autobiographical plays a large role in Ray's sculptures; examples of this theme include Self-Portrait, Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley, Yes, No, and Family Romance. The demonic, possessed child in Boy might refer to Ray's eccentric childhood, which was dominated by the fact his sister was schizophrenic, a fact that profoundly changed the relationships of all the members of the Ray family. When asked by Storr about whether this fact affected his art, Ray replied, "Yes, a lot, really a lot. It was sort of like growing up with The Exorcist. It was very bizarre and yet it was normal to us" (ibid., p. 102).
Concerning the present work, Ray has said: "I'm not interested in stopping things through definition. I like Boy because you wrestle with him but he doesn't become any one thing. Looking at him is an event which is always indeterminate" (ibid.).
Since antiquity, mimesis has been understood as one of the principal foundations of art. Even in the twentieth century, with the advent of abstraction, realism is still widely held as a goal. Many key modern artists have called themselves realists, including Picasso, Mondrian, Magritte and Ryman--painters who depart significantly from the traditional boundaries of representational art. In the twentieth century, much of "realist" art typically focuses on the depiction of essence rather than appearance.
But Charles Ray's representational sculptures fit neither traditional nor modern conceptions of mimesis. While his works may initially appear simple and straightforward, on further examination inevitably they are alarming and disturbing. Ray's representational works tend to be either false copies (Yes and No most notably) or copies of copies (Male Mannequin and Fall, for example), or both. Either way, they occlude the ideal transparency of realist art. That is to say, Ray's works proclaim their own artificiality and unnaturalness, not their proximity to the original. They are seemingly perfect simulacra, but without essence. They are uninhabited shells, abandoned houses. It is this quality that gives them their eerie ghostliness.
Boy, too, is a copy of a copy. It is a sculpture based on a mannequin based on a boy. The fundamental and universal power of sculpture is that it is a physical presence, not a mere figment like a painting. It is for this reason that sculpture is more often thought to be alive in some magical sense. The worldover, sculpture more often serves as the focus of religious ritual; and during times of social, political or religious upheaval, it is sculpture, not painting, that suffers more from the ravages of iconoclasm. The essential vitality of sculpture has been brilliantly described by Johann Gottfried Herder in his fundamental essay on aesthetics, Plastik (1778): "Sculpture is Truth, painting is Dream. A statue can embrace me; I can kneel before it and become its friend and companion, it is present, it is there. The most beautiful painting is a romance, a dream of a dream" (quoted in J. Hall, The World as Sculpture, London 1999, p. 92).
But Boy is a sculpture of a mannequin, not of a boy; and the idea of a live mannequin is frightening, the subject of a horror movie. The scale of Boy reinforces its threatening character. Oversized, it tends to reduce the viewer to a child; and it is children who most readily image that dolls and other simulacra might come to life. As Freud has stated, "In their early games children do not distinguish at all sharply between living and inanimate objects, and they are especially fond of treating dolls like living people" (S. Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" Penguin Freud Library, vol. 14, p. 355).
In conversation with Robert Storr, Ray has discussed how some of these issues affect Boy and his other sculptures based on mannequins: "Sears wrote a manual to help [its] mannequin sculptors and sculptresses with things like the proportions of legs to fingers. It's an approach called the Sears Standard. The manual says that a mannequin should never look at you, or it seems to be haunted. If it has eye contact with you, you can't project into it because it turns into its own person... Also it should never smile, or else it becomes demonic; but a child mannequin is allowed to smile" (R. Storr, "Anxious Spaces," Art in America, November 1988, p. 103). Ray further explained that Boy smiles "because he's a child mannequin" (ibid.).
At 71½ inches, Boy is the same height as the artist, and the piece therefore seems to be self-referential, perhaps even a kind of altered self-portrait. The autobiographical plays a large role in Ray's sculptures; examples of this theme include Self-Portrait, Oh! Charley, Charley, Charley, Yes, No, and Family Romance. The demonic, possessed child in Boy might refer to Ray's eccentric childhood, which was dominated by the fact his sister was schizophrenic, a fact that profoundly changed the relationships of all the members of the Ray family. When asked by Storr about whether this fact affected his art, Ray replied, "Yes, a lot, really a lot. It was sort of like growing up with The Exorcist. It was very bizarre and yet it was normal to us" (ibid., p. 102).
Concerning the present work, Ray has said: "I'm not interested in stopping things through definition. I like Boy because you wrestle with him but he doesn't become any one thing. Looking at him is an event which is always indeterminate" (ibid.).