Sanné Mestrom: a reclining figure
A dear and trusted colleague said to me, maybe a fortnight ago, "Hey, what's with Sanné Mestrom's interest in Cubism?"in relation to her recent "Weeping Women" sculpture commission at the Monash University Museum of Art. It's not the kind of question he usually asks. As far as I can remember he's never said anything like, "What's with this or that artist's interest in hyper realism, academic landscape painting, post-post-post minimalism, New York School abstraction, expressionism etc etc," and this has had me thinking ever since.
Out of all the art movements from the last 100 years why single out Cubism as being an odd one for a contemporary artist to become interested in? I personally don't think there is any good reason to banish cubism from the list of very "useful" isms, after all, it was, contrary to current propaganda, the movement that invented the most and had more fruitful spin-offs than any other.
Sanné Mestrom and friend recline and sit on a reclining figure
There was, however, a totally illogical lapse in Cubist thinking when it came to sculpture. In painting they argued that through cubism they could give more information than in "normal 2D realism" by showing aspects of all sides of an object, person or scene simultaneously, something that realist sculpture has always been able to do because, of course, it is, by its very nature, three dimensional!
But unperturbed by this the sculptors of the time simply adopted the Cubist style and tried to make complex 3D versions of it regardless of whether there was a good reason to do so or not. Sanné Mestrom takes quite a different path by thickening up 2D shapes until they become capable of standing on their own, they are, in effect, honest interpretations of the highly innovative collages so favoured by Picasso Braque and others.
Sanné Mestrom: a seated figure
We must not forget that these early Cubist collages were constructed from real ready made items that preceded Marcel Duchamp's interpretation of the idea.
Sanné Mestrom: a standing figure
Sanné Mestrom: a reclining figure with reclining, seated and standing women
