Found, Made, Cast: Sculptures by Nancy Graves, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein

For centuries artists have cast their clay and plaster sculptures in bronze to endow their art with durability. Yet bronze casting holds an inherent paradox for the modern artist. On one side, the romantic notion of authorship favors the model as the true work of art bearing the hand of the artist. On the other, aesthetic conventions of finish and patina favor the bronze. Although artists like Rodin and Brancusi have explored the tensions between these two poles, most artists privileged one aspect over the other until, in the Postwar period, a diverse group of artists started to dismantle the dichotomy of original and copy.

Found, Made, Cast presents the work of three artists —Nancy Graves, Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein— who pioneered new approaches to casting in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. These artists rethought the status of cast bronze sculpture, in a way such that their initial model possessed all the conceptual properties of the subsequent metal versions. To emphasize this point, the exhibition presents a range of works prior to their being cast in bronze or assembled in completed sculptures.