Art Review : LACMA’s Spanish Sculpture: A Small Gem of a Show

Mention Renaissance and Baroque sculpture in Europe, and you’re likely first to think of Italy, then perhaps of some other region of the central continent, such as France or Germany. The Iberian Peninsula probably won’t come to mind.

Nor will sculpture made of painted wood. Because Italian Renaissance and Baroque artists wanted their work to resonate off the vaunted traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity, bronze and marble were their preferred mediums. Sculpture of painted wood seems vaguely medieval, an artifact of that supposed “dark age” of irrational superstition that had followed the catastrophic decline of glorious antiquity.

For this and other reasons, the painted wood (and occasionally terra-cotta) reliefs and free-standing figures in the exhibition “Spanish Polychrome Sculpture (1500-1800) in United States Collections” will likely be new to most museum visitors. If it registers at all, painted Spanish sculpture of the 16th through the 18th Century might come to mind as a prominent prototype for colonial devotional sculpture in the Caribbean, the Americas and the Philippines, where Spain had far-flung outposts.

The unprecedented exhibition of 37 sculptures, which was organized by the Spanish Institute in New York and currently may be seen at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is a small gem. Three centuries are a lot to cover with just three dozen objects, while many individual sculptures were originally meant to be seen as part of large and complex altarpieces. Still, the provocative show offers a solid overview of this rarely considered art.

Almost never does this religious sculpture awe with authoritative power. Authority is simply assumed in doctrinal art, for these are effigies of holy people.

Instead, even the bloodiest of what can be a very bloody art, such as intensely veristic depictions of a tortured Christ, seems designed to perform an elaborate seduction. The use of paint to achieve highly realistic human flesh, of glass eyes whose reflectiveness seems moist, of dazzlingly decorative estofado --a laborious technique in which incised gilding catches flickering candlelight, pumping up the theatrical magic--all conspire to create an empathetic pathway for a viewer.

This is sculpture conceived as a doorway, opening away from the physical and onto a metaphysical world, and partaking of both. Spain’s Catholic Church knew that you catch more believers with honey, and the artists in their service laid it on with often astonishing skill.

Frequently, as in an exquisite rendition of a martyred 18-year-old--St. Stanislaus Kostka, the first Jesuit to be beatified--the artist would juxtapose a serenely idealized figure with tempestuous, dramatic drapery. Hints of the elaborate excitement of the saintly story swirl around the fixed compass of a coolly unruffled figure, like an echo of a thrilling hurricane around a storm’s calm eye.

Another standard device, found in more than half the objects at LACMA, is the brilliant, seemingly simple technique of carving the figure’s mouth in a slightly open position. These sculptural men and women seem to register an eternal sigh--a silent exhalation whose aura of longing is tinged with grief.

The slightly opened mouth is also a unique stylistic convention remarkable for its subtle effectiveness. It signals a figure about to speak, but of course unable to. In the face of holy mystery these beatific saints are pointedly rendered as speechless.

Spanish polychrome sculpture is radically different from Italian bronze and marble sculpture of the period, but not just for mundane reasons of material. Spaniards may not have had marble quarries or a tradition of bronze sculpture to mine, but neither explains the distinctive tenor of their painted sculpture.

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In Italy, an acute consciousness of progress and modernity was paramount: Artistic allusions to classical antiquity were meant to celebrate a cultural origin, but their sharp departure from medieval convention also meant to show how far civilization had come since Greece and Rome.

In Spain, by contrast, the manifold realities of the present were instead a launching pad to communion with eternal mysteries. Medieval conventions were not jettisoned or wholly transformed by artists, as much as added on to newer Renaissance and Baroque forms; the unusual cumulative style meant to be perpetually alluring. From our postmodern vantage point today, this artistic strategy has much to tell us.

A few pieces did not travel to California from the East. And unfortunately missing from all venues were any works from the New York-based Hispanic Society of America, home to the largest and most significant collection of this material in the country, but which has a firm policy against making loans.

Still, several worthwhile additions exclusive to the presentation in Los Angeles make up for the loss. Most notable are two wood sculptures, one of St. Mark (circa 1560) wrapped in wildly energetic drapery, the other a grave and imposing life-size figure of the obscure St. Gines de la Jara. Believed to have been carved in 1692 by Jose Caro, the latter is a gilded eye-dazzler acquired awhile back by the J. Paul Getty Museum and now making its public debut after extensive conservation work. The St. Mark--dramatic and very Italianate in its tornado of Mannerist style--is by Alonso Berruguete, perhaps the most influential sculptor in Renaissance Spain.

LACMA has added eight liturgical vestments and textiles from its own collection, in order to provide a bit of context. Some, such as a tapestry fragment embroidered with dragons juxtaposed to a carved relief panel from a choir stall, are remarkably similar not only in general style and mood but in specific design.

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The show also offers LACMA a chance to highlight a small, astonishingly beautiful painted terra-cotta figure that has been in its collection since 1978. Barely a foot tall, and clad in a Cistercian monk’s habit whose exquisite modeling yields a stunning monumentality that belies its modest size, the figure of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, head tossed back and arms outstretched, seems poised to lift off its little pedestal and ascend into the ether.

And that, in a nutshell, suggests what is so distinctive about Spanish Renaissance and Baroque sculpture. “Come with me,” these figures beckon. You’re inclined to want to follow.

* LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., (213) 857-6000, through June 26. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.