Sandra Rigali’s image of a semi-nude takes us back to a time and place where idealized harmony and beauty found form in the human body. The perfection of Greek/Roman statuary that we call classicism still calls and Rigali answers, drawing from that heritage, daunting for the artist, yet a source of inspiration and allure for her. Her Aphrodite/Venus currently exhibited opens a corridor to our past, yet creates it’s own reality.
Aphrodite is present, her pose and gesture going toward harmony and stillness, as if cognizant of classical sculpture that draws strength from its centre. She sings lyrical beauty. There is grace in her gesture as one arm reaches back to hold the cloth of her garment that falls from her hips while the other rests calmly between her slightly opened thighs, revealing a firm breast. Face and the hair evoke the glories of Greek vase painting. The profile’s fine outline, with wavy hair in classical style, the noble brow and closed eyes, the countenance slightly bowed in calm introspection recall the solemnity and aching beauty of classical Greek funerary steles. The garment’s chalky clay-like tones quote eternity. The figure settles on the canvas. Noble, calm stillness reigns. As is Regali’s style, Aphrodite’s being springs spontaneously from dark. Her brushed line defines lyrical grace, conferring a meditative mood. The journey to the eternal idealized nude is completed, the link to its mysteries confirmed in classical beauty, harmony and stillness.
Regali’s hand quickens this wistful nude with intriguing tension. A passion that will not be stilled teases, even tests Aphrodite’s serenity. Colour and brush stroke coax an artistic counter-world into being. A whole sub-world of broad beams of muted gray and brown colour encase the figure, following its contours and movements and countering it. Broken, brown lines furrow restlessly through her garment’s chalky fullness. It seems alive as it cascades from the slender hips with its own spontaneous energy. Lavender highlights selective areas such the goddess’s slender thigh. Dark grey creeps, cloudlike, from the edges toward lighter fields, as if insisting to occupy the figure’s domain, while Aphrodite’s classic, elegant presence shines unperturbed in its sheltering halo. This drama, the noble set against the spontaneous, brings the canvas its life as a work of art.
Birgit Urmson
Art-historian
UC Berkeley Extension
June 6, 2011
Birgit Urmson was born and educated in Germany, studied art-history and classical archaeology at the universities of Munich, Vienna and Paris. After moving to California she finished her studies with an MA in art-history and an MA in environmental design from the University of California iat Berkeley. She worked in the field of independent film, produced and directed among others, a documentary on her family during the Nazi period for German TV and co-directed an international Women-in Film film festival.
Speeches made during the opening ceremony
Conversation with Sandra just after the opening ceremony