Madison Square Park Sculpture: von Rydingsvard

OUP US is located in New York City. Our office is on Madison Avenue and I live conveniently nearby. Everyday on my walk to work I pass Madison Square Park and wonder about the art scattered throughout the park. The big wooden sculpture always catches my eye. Who made that and why? So today, I used the Oxford arsenal of reference tools to learn more about Ursula von Rydingsvard, the sculptor who is featured in the park. I used the Grove Art Online to search for von Rydingsvard’s biography. Below is what I learned.

Rydingsvard, Ursula von (b Deensen, Germany, 26 July 1942) American sculptor of German birth. Von Rydingsvard was born in a German work camp, the fifth of seven children, to a Ukrainian farmer and Polish mother. After the end of World War II, she and her family were relocated to several different labour and refugee camps before migrating to the United States in 1950 and settling in Plainville, CT. From 1960 to 1962 she took art classes at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, before attending the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, where she earned a BA and MA in art education. She continued studying art education at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1969 to 1970, moving back to Connecticut and enrolling in art courses at the New School for Social Research in New York City during the summer of 1972. The following year von Rydingsvard attended Columbia University where she studied with artists and scholars including Ronald Bladen, George Sugarman and Meyer Schapiro, and graduated with an MFA in 1975. In 1982 she was appointed assistant professor and later associate professor of sculpture at Yale University. In 1986 she became a professor at the Graduate Division of the School of the Visual Arts in New York. Von Rydingsvard primarily worked with paint and sheets of welded steel before 1976, when artist Michael Mulhern (b 1940) introduced her to cedar beams. She is well known for sculptures created from 4×4 cedar planks whose forms and titles allude to a personal and collective history.

Von Rydingsvard’s sculptures echo architectural structures such as barns, altars and walls, as well as everyday domestic objects including vessels, utensils and tools. One of the most pervasive forms in von Rydingsvard’s works is the bowl—a utilitarian and timeless object that conjures associations of sanctuary and confinement, nourishment and sustenance, and transformation (e.g. For Paul, 1990–92; Mountainville, NY, Storm King A. Cent.). To create these monumental forms, some which tower over 4 metres high, von Rydingsvard carved, hacked and sliced cedar beams using a circular saw. With the assistance of staff, the pieces were assembled, glued and coated with an adhesive spray and graphite powder, which was then scrubbed into the wood with steel wool. Although massive in scale and universal in form, the sculptures are expressive, intimate and personal, with surfaces that appear gashed and lacerated, as well as weathered and worn. Von Rydingsvard merged the gestural marks of Abstract Expressionism with the geometric, repetitive forms of Minimalism, and has described her work as a dignified and reserved expression of emotions and feelings.

Von Rydingsvard attributed her affinity for wood to her heritage of Polish peasant farmers and her own memories of growing up in wooden barracks and churches. This familiarity with wood, along with the neutrality of the pre-cut beam, gave her the freedom to manipulate the material. Rather than preparing sketches of the finished sculpture, von Rydingsvard was guided by her intuition; a process she described as working through her anxieties and uncertainties. Using this organic, but manufactured material, her work explores the historical and ongoing relationship between humans and nature (e.g. Song of a Saint (Saint Eulalia), 1979; Lewistown, NY, Artpark, now destr. and Iggy’s Pride, 1990–91; Sonoma Valley, CA, Oliver Ranch and Skip to My Lou, 1997; Washington, DC, Microsoft Corporation). The rhythm and repetition in her sculptural forms, installed in outdoor spaces as well as in galleries, also relate to the daily rituals she witnessed as a child in church, to the seasonal cultivation of the land and to the domestic chores in the home. Mama, Your Legs (2000; New York, Gal. Lelong), a motorized sculpture in which wooden blocks strike the interior of wooden vessels in repetitious thuds, alludes to the churning of butter, or as the title may suggest, a worn and pained body that refuses to stop.

In the mid-1990s von Rydingsvard began incorporating cow intestines into her wooden sculptures. Maglownica (1995), a Polish word for the washboards farm women used to soften wet sheets, is a tall plank (3.65-m) sheathed in the transparent, delicate and organic material. This experimentation with lightness continued in katul, katul (2003), a five-storey sculpture of plastic and aluminum suspended in the glass atrium of the Queens County Family Courthouse, New York. With the title referencing a Polish children’s game, von Rydingsvard sought to create a light spiritual presence in a place burdened by troubled families. Abounding with multiple associations, her sculptures with their abstract and familiar forms resonate with a sense of timelessness and mystery.