Meredith Bergmann: Beauty and Irony in Sculpture

Walking along an avenue or through a city park, one is likely to encounter sculptures. They are permanent or temporary, historical or avant-garde. They are so ubiquitous that as city dwellers, we hardly pause to consider them. But what makes public art relevant? What makes it responsible to the public? Does it need to be?
Meredith Bergmann: Beauty and Irony in Sculpture
Boston Women’s Memorial, by Meredith Bergmann, 2003, bronze and granite, figures 1 1/4 times life size. (Ricardo Barros)
Christine Lin
9/17/2012
Updated:
9/29/2015
<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/HISTORIA-pinky.jpg"><img class="size-large wp-image-293137" src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/HISTORIA-pinky-452x450.jpg" alt="Historia Testis Temporum: Pinky, by Meredith Bergmann, 2010, commissioned by the Brooklyn Historical Society, resin, 48 inches by 48 inches by 18 inches. (Michael Bergmann)" width="590" height="588"/></a>
Historia Testis Temporum: Pinky, by Meredith Bergmann, 2010, commissioned by the Brooklyn Historical Society, resin, 48 inches by 48 inches by 18 inches. (Michael Bergmann)

NEW YORK—Walking along an avenue or through a city park, one is likely to encounter sculptures. They are permanent or temporary, historical or avant-garde. They are so ubiquitous that as city dwellers, we hardly pause to consider them. But what makes public art relevant? What makes it responsible to the public? Does it need to be?

For Passaic, New Jersey-born sculptor Meredith Bergmann, these questions overarch her daily work. Bergmann is responsible for many public artworks seen around the country, such as the Boston Women’s Memorial; the Marian Anderson statue for Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C.; and Alma Mater for the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind.

Bergmann’s work is guided by a sense of deliberateness and civil-mindedness that is not often seen in artists working today. “Bergmann has made goodness more engaging than badness usually is,” writes Donald Kuspit in an essay published in American Arts Quarterly. Perhaps the reason for this observation is that Bergman’s work is centered on two qualities: beauty, and irony. 

“Beauty is fundamentally organizing,” she said. “It is not merely inspiring, arousing, and thrilling, but it gives people the feeling that the cosmos makes sense. And that’s a necessary feeling.”

But beauty is not enough for Bergmann. “Something that is merely beautiful is not art enough for me. It needs layers of meaning that unfold over time. It is not enough to merely assert something.” So irony is necessary too.

“Irony has the opposite effect of beauty,” she said. “It’s like humor; it has a subversive element. It’s disorganizing in a positive way. The combination of beauty and irony, for me, means art that is stimulating, provoking, and confronts assumptions, but at the same time affirms in a charged way.”

An example of these qualities is on view at the Brooklyn Historical Society. It is the head of Pinky, a 9-year-old slave girl from Washington, D.C., whose freedom and education was paid for through a mock auction held by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. 

Beecher posed as a slave auctioneer to raise money from his congregation, thus buying freedom for Pinky and other slave children. The irony is that Pinky was 1/16 black, and it was her pale skin that helped to win the white congregation’s empathy. 

Pinky’s bust is installed at the Historical Society, in which the real girl’s Bill of Sale is displayed. She gazes out from a wreath, exuding strength mixed with melancholy.

Moments of a Nation

Bergmann’s sculptures tend to articulate the nation’s mood and collective memory. One in particular is Memorial to September 11th, a bronze of a female nude with her hands up in front of her. Planes crash into the backs of her hands, as if disappearing into her flesh.

<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/Boston_memorial.jpg"><img class="size-large wp-image-293138" src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/Boston_memorial-676x441.jpg" alt="Boston Women's Memorial, by Meredith Bergmann, 2003, bronze and granite, figures 1 1/4 times life size. (Ricardo Barros)" width="590" height="385"/></a>
Boston Women's Memorial, by Meredith Bergmann, 2003, bronze and granite, figures 1 1/4 times life size. (Ricardo Barros)

The sculpture was unveiled on Sept. 9, in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, its permanent home. However, its first iteration, a smaller piece, was not shown for six or seven years, in part because of its intensely personal meaning to Bergmann. 

In the period immediately following the terrorist attacks, Bergmann desperately wanted to join the rescue efforts at ground zero but had to stay at home to care for her son, who had been diagnosed with autism. It was during this disorienting and emotional time spent away from her studio that the sculpture was first conceived. 

“It was an image that just came to me,” Bergmann said. “It immediately came to my mind as an epiphany about how something profound can be brought physically to us and become a part of us. 

“The female nude represents New York City—young, strong, and even tough. There’s an element of motherhood, of the body absorbing threats. Her hands, with palms facing in, are in a gesture both of protection and of prayer.”


Realism in an Abstract Landscape 

The tragedy of 9/11 has been and continues to be a subject of artists and sculptors. Memorial sculptures that have been in the news include dozens of statues dedicated to the heroism of firefighters and paramedics and several pieces that mimic twisted metal and broken concrete. 

Examples of the latter include two 10th-anniversary pieces installed in the city: Victorii Rebuild by San Priest; and 911 by Bill Barrett. Another, which lives in Saratoga, is Tempered by Memory 9/11, a 24-foot structure forged from steel beams taken directly from ground zero. Bergmann’s 9/11 sculpture is markedly different from these memorials, as is the greater body of her work.

“My work is easy to categorize because it is very traditional in style, but at the same time, it is highly contemporary,” she said. “I love work that is made slowly, carefully, lovingly, deeply. And that might disqualify me from a lot of contemporary concerns.”

Another reason is that Bergmann insists on presenting natural and human forms, as opposed to abstract ones, and doing so realistically.

“Representations of the human body are immediately more engaging and fascinating than abstract works. I think it’s more difficult to make good representational sculptures than good abstract sculptures. Representational art is richer in symbols and generates an innate physical, emotional, and social response.”

Bergman recalls how difficult it was to find someone to teach realism when she was in art school in the 1970s. In search of an anatomy course, she went to a professor for help but was immediately shot down with the excuse that it was unnecessary for an artist to study the human body. 

It’s no longer as bad in art schools, but “education in this country is falling apart,” Bergmann said. “One hundred or 200 years ago, learning to draw was a regular part of education, like learning penmanship was. 

“Now any art historical education people get is from sitting in a dark room looking at slides or being dragged through a museum being told that a piece is significant because the artist comes from Brooklyn.” 

Artists themselves certainly have a huge role to play in furthering the public’s understanding and appreciation of art, but they can’t do it alone, Bergmann said. Meanwhile, Bergmann continues to create artwork that is meaningful and thrilling to her, and hopes that the public will find it just as captivating.

“I try to make work that is beautiful enough to stop people in their tracks long enough for them to discover some of its layers of meaning,” she said.

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Christine Lin is an arts reporter for the Epoch Times. She can be found lurking in museum galleries and poking around in artists' studios when not at her desk writing.
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