File:Elise Siegel rough edges 2019.jpg

Installation view of exhibition by Elise Siegel, rough edges (partial installation view, twelve ceramic portrait busts on plywood stands, busts approximately 24"– 28", overall dimensions variable, 2019, Studio10, Brooklyn, NY). The image illustrates a later stage and body of work in Elise Siegel's career from the 2010s when she produced hand-built ceramic portrait busts that explore human interiority. The life-sized to 24"-inch sculptures are created from memory and imagination (rather than actual people or models) and presented on pedestals or plinths. Critics note them for their ability to convey complex, equivocal emotions and evoke a sense of the pathos, horror and eros regarding daily human experience, which is achieved through direct, primal means: rough but subtle modeling and varied glazing and surfaces. This project and similar works have been publicly exhibited in prominent venues and discussed in major art journals and daily press publications.

Artist Elise Siegel. Copyright held by the artist.

Elise Siegel

Installation view

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a later stage and body of work in Elise Siegel's career from the 2010s: her hand-built ceramic portrait busts, which are not portraits of specific people, but works created from memory and imagination that explore human interiority. This work draws on a range of art historical influences such as the Jōmon period Dogū and Haniwa funeral figures of ancient Japan, European iron helmets, Renaissance reliquary busts, idols and African masks. The life-sized to 24"-inch sculptures characteristically employ fleshy features whose modeling ranges from naturalistic to lumpy and crude, glazing that shifts from subtly layered patina-like surfaces to provisional and raw, and visible cracks at the base of the neck, created by firing the works in two pieces. Reviews describe the heads as anonymous and universal—suggestive but indeterminate in terms of race and gender, and mutable in registering fleeting passages of disquiet, unease or indecision—and suggest such qualities translate into emotional vulnerability, warmth, and personal projection on the part of viewers. Because the article is about an artist and her work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to visualize this key phase and distinct body of work in her career, which brought widespread recognition through exhibitions in major venues and coverage by major critics in publications. Siegel's work of this type and this work in particular is discussed in the article and by prominent critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Elise Siegel, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.