Marble’s Got Feelings Too

The Norton Museum would like to correct a wrong. According to the museum’s recent press release, the world is full of paint fetishists who absolutely adore canvasses but turn up their buttony little art world noses at sculpture — a grosser, sweatier art that’s really more of a “craft.” According to the release, even da Vinci got in on the snobbery, writing about sculpture’s inherent inferiority. This is obvious bullshit, and the angry Nortonions won’t stand for it. Hence “Off The Wall,” an examination of the human form as it has been captured in sculpture for the last three centuries in both America and Europe. Artists exhibited include such famous folks as Degas (though he’s represented only by a little wax figure, so don’t get too excited) and Picasso; as weird as Duane Hanson (remember the creepily realistic sculpture of a construction worker that used to be installed at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood Int’l Airport? That guy!); and as deliciously inscrutable as Max Ernst. You’ll find the work of almost 30 other artists, too, all sitting there, brooding, wishing fervently they’d been born paintings instead; eyeing the walls with the marbleized cool of the dispossessed and bloodless.

“Off The Wall” runs through September 6 at the Norton Museum of Art, 1451 S. Olive Ave. in West Palm Beach. Admission costs $3 to $8. Call 561-832-5196, or visit norton.org.
May 23-Sept. 6, 2009