Man Holding a Piece of Glass 1971

Curator: Immediately, I'm struck by the figures here, their pose feels…almost classical but strained, unnatural somehow. Editor: And that's an intriguing doorway into "Man Holding a Piece of Glass", a mixed media piece created in 1971 by Charles Garabedian. It has that feeling for a reason: Garabedian was very interested in the way classical antiquity shaped Western representation. Curator: So you're saying he's pulling from antiquity, but twisting the cultural associations, or expectations, we would normally project onto these images? Editor: Precisely! Look at how he deliberately employs a rawness of style against a clearly constructed classical pyramidal arrangement. In that classical art, the arrangement suggests harmony, a resolution to the visual drama. Curator: And there are the figures themselves, nude. A visual shorthand for truth, openness in art, but here there’s… disquiet. The standing figure’s glass cuts the image but it also has a strong symmetry and iconographical clarity: It becomes like a symbolic barrier. The nude figures feel vulnerable, more exposed than powerful. Editor: That’s an important nuance. The figures rest on a collection of ordinary, overlooked items – the bowling pin, the box of chocolates perhaps… all of which build up to this very self-conscious symbol, the central figure. And what could the glass suggest? It seems to me, at once, like both a lens, through which we are meant to view and reevaluate the human condition. Curator: … But also an impassable division, or obstacle. If it is a looking glass, there’s a critical gaze imposed, but to what ends? Editor: These are tensions that are so characteristic of art after 1945, where grand, symbolic ambitions meet the stuff of quotidian life and culture. He also makes the viewer acutely conscious of their place within cultural frameworks. Curator: It makes one ponder the ways cultural memories are reshaped, revisited, and revived in this kind of art. Editor: A fruitful exchange across historical styles and iconographic reference points.