ART REVIEW : GRAHAM’S ANATOMY OF EMOTION

Last year at this time the magic of the Olympic Games still hovered, as did controversy ignited by sculptor Robert Graham’s “Olympic Gate” in Exposition Park. Anybody who thought the slight aesthetic imperfections of the work might have signaled slippage in Graham’s command or self-confidence will be reassured by his current exhibition.

It is a not-for-sale exposure of a couple of dozen recent bronze fragments and one full-length figure, on public view at 48 Market St., Venice, to Aug. 1. Graham put the show together, he says, simply “because I wanted a lot of people to see the work.”

And no wonder. The fragments are pieces of castings that didn’t pan out but yielded--in the fashion of ancient sculpture--unexpectedly eloquent and economical results. The laws of physics tend to edit form with great wisdom.

In general, these provocative shards seem both more emotional and more decorative than is usual in Graham’s intensely restrained full figures. Emotion comes from tattered edges and felicitous accidents that give, say, a ruined “Fountain Figure” arranging her hair the elegiac poetic distance of a Classical Roman bronze. Isolation of body parts--especially several elegant legs--heightens detail so that they become Surreal with the magic of primitive fetishes or religious icons.

Decorativeness proceeds from the fact that the fragments have been plated metallic gold, silver or white. In some instances, surfaces and interiors are different colors, lending them Byzantine sensuality. It clearly feels like a move toward the prevailing Post-Modern sensibility but, with the exception of one silly little blue body on a column relief, Graham brings it off with the conviction of a sincere conversion rather than a careerist tactic.

The lone full figure is displayed by itself like an enshrined deity, in a room painted rust brown. She focuses a floating impression that, at bottom, the meaning of Graham’s suavely enigmatic art may be found in the simple secular idealism of men who obsessively worship physically beautiful women. Here the hunch is reinforced by the earthiness of both setting and sculpture. Titled “Kim,” the figure--although a boffo beauty by any measure--is somewhat thick of ankle and heavy of feature, like a Sumerian temple goddess transformed into a Venice Earth Mother. Her everyday reality is further confirmed by the fact that Graham has set aside his habit of making figures hairless, which gave them a slight aura of self-conscious extraterrestrial kinkiness (like those shaved models that used to wear Rudi Gernreich’s topless bathing suits in the ‘60s).

“Kim” allows us to react to her freely. That accessibility is good artistic politics in the current climate. Better is the fact that we wind up liking “Kim” rather than “the sculpture.” That is testament to Graham’s continuing ability to infuse inert bronze with a haunting sense of life.