ART REVIEW : Alison Saar: Big Ideas and Considerable Skill

Brash might be a word that comes to mind for a young sculptor who aggressively means to invoke no less a precedent than Michelangelo for her own work. That Alison Saar does so--and that she manages to pull it off in a provocative way--is a testament to her considerable artistic skills.

Saar’s “Dying Slave” is an upright, heavily chiseled wooden form that pointedly recalls the Renaissance master’s famous marble carving (circa 1513), after which it is named. It is one of several first-rate works in a small survey exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Organized by Sidney Lawrence, the show brings together two dozen sculptures, drawings, retablos and assemblages made during the past decade by the 37-year-old, L.A.-born and New York-based artist.

Generally, Saar’s free-standing sculptures are her strongest works. The significance of her retablos and assemblages will be found principally in the way in which they represent her modus operandi : Hers is an art constructed from elements associated with the black African diaspora, and the assemblage format is a way to pull together a host of seemingly conflicted and incompatible materials, images, meanings and traditions.

Her shrinelike, devotional retablos, for instance, are flat assemblages made principally from snipped tin, and sometimes embellished with palm fronds. Some have a decidedly Haitian feel, a suggestion reinforced by a 1986 hanging made from beaded fabric, “La Rosa Negra,” which is reminiscent of a so-called voodoo flag.

In retablos and assemblages, an iconic representation of a person might include a small door cut into the tin, behind which are secreted small, amulet-like objects. “Medicine Man” (1986) is a carved figure standing on a spiral tornado that spins out from a Coke bottle; his chest opens to reveal an array of small medicine bottles.

The general conception of art as a healing force, as well as the specific device of hidden potions placed within a figural representation, each recalls a variety of African traditions. Think of Yombe power figures, in which medicinal crystals would be placed inside hollow reeds wrapped in fabric and then be strapped to the carved figure of a man.

Linking these ancient traditions to a modern American soft drink, which was itself once touted as a general curative, attempts to build a bridge of common cultural ritual.

Saar also makes commemorative objects, such as the little tin, wood and glass sculpture called “Uitenhage” (1985). A toylike figure of a wide-eyed young boy riding a bicycle, marked by a gaping hole ripped into his chest, it memorializes a youth killed by South African troops during a funeral procession in a black township.

Other reliefs or busts depict women grappling with or wrapped in snakes. Sexual charge meets Christian iconography.

Works such as these can exude a certain charm. But their ambition seems muted and one-dimensional.

It’s as if Saar is slowly, tentatively but deliberately gathering together a disparate array of component parts, which only occasionally get fully integrated in free-standing sculptures, such as a forbidding image of a powerful “Salome” (1988), who cradles the bright blue, painted alabaster head of John the Baptist in her arms; or “Terra Firma” (1991), in which the bleak, disheveled figure of a man sprawls horizontally on the floor. These sculptures court a resonant complexity.

That liveliness is manifest in “Vulcanized (Tony)” (1986), which has all the temperament of a distinctive portrait. The bravura, life-size figure, who coolly leans against the gallery wall while brandishing a cigarette, is tightly wrapped in strips of rubber--a technique that recalls various African traditions of fabrication, while a material that yields a plainly urban and industrial edge.

The title’s allusion to the Roman god of fire is just about right for the figure’s hip swagger. Meanwhile, its sharp reference to the common method by which raw rubber is simultaneously hardened and kept elastic for use further complicates the sculpture’s thoroughly engaging character.

Most dynamically, Saar’s “Dying Slave” ricochets off Michelangelo’s famous precedent, which sought to give form to the spiritual conflict of a human soul, trapped in the bonds of sin and mortality. The two figures share a general pose, but there are distinct differences between them.

Saar’s sculpture is not of princely marble, but of carved wood that has been covered with nailed sheets of stamped tin, most likely salvaged from the ceiling of a derelict city building. A tight cluster of nails pounded into the figure can also be glimpsed through a small, grimy, glass window in the figure’s belly.

Both inside and outside, the nails do double duty. They recall the famous Kongo nail figures of Africa, in which nails ritualistically hammered into wood carvings of humans and of animals serve to both activate and protect the hidden soul. Likewise, they evoke the martyrdom and salvation of the Christian crucifixion.

Notably, the right hand of Michelangelo’s slave weakly fingers the narrow bond of cloth that encircles and constricts his powerful chest. By contrast, Saar’s right hand is held up near his face.

The reason for this conspicuous difference in placement is surely that the wrist of Saar’s black slave is bound with iron shackles to the left arm, which, like Michelangelo’s, is languorously raised up and behind the slave’s head. As a result, the existential bondage of Saar’s moving figure is of a distinctly different order: His shackles do not represent a confrontation with God, but with the awful brutality of mankind.

* Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Independence at 7th Street, S.W., Washington, (202) 357-2700. Daily, through June 27.