Torn Notebook - People: Mark Rosenthal

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Mark Rosenthal
Director, National Gallery of Art

image of Mark Rosenthal: Director, National Gallery of Art

Preparing...
"In order to make a sculpture for Lincoln, Nebraska, you have to leave the studio in New York and go to Nebraska to think about it. To think about what that place is like. What makes sense? What does it look like? What is the nature of that place?"

"He is a still life sculptor."
-- Mark Rosenthal

Comments on Oldenburg...
"He gives a new definition to what a sculpture will form. Oldenburg has discovered a whole kind of reservoir for this approach to sculpture out of every day objects. So in many ways, as with so many artists, the bad boy becomes a kind of classical artist in the sense that he is most interested in formal relations. "

"Lots of what Oldenburg has done represents the rethinking of the monument tradition offering a new set of subjects to be monuments. And what those are, are what we have been talking about. Everyday objects, objects floating in space, completely banal sorts of objects. And naturally this art projects another kind, a completely revolutionary as it were, view of the monument."

"The pop artist is looking around his or her world to define himself or herself."
-- Mark Rosenthal

"Oldenburg wants to make monuments understandable and for the every man, the every woman, the person, the daily life kind of existence of those people."
-- Mark Rosenthal

On challenging the viewer...
"These artists are dealing with every day matters as have artists have in the past, but they are using the every day materials of life too. So it is a further challenge to the viewer to accept the notion that art can be not just about, one's daily experience but can be rendered with the commonest of materials."

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