Jonathan Silver

Jonathan Silver (November 19, 1937 – July 10, 1992) was an American figurative sculptor, and visual artist "known for infusing classical forms with an extreme, implicitly modern sense of emotion." His work draws from the hellenistic tradition, as well as Rodin, Giacometti and Freudian psychoanalysis.

Silver started his career as an art historian, first studying at Columbia University art history graduate department under Meyer Schapiro. He never finished his PHD thesis on Giacometti but instead started drawing and making plaster heads which later turned into large complex figurative plaster and clay installations which were often critiqued in the New York Times by art critic Michael Brenson and others. Silver went on to cast many of his large ethereal figures from plaster to bronze. His art has been exhibited at Sculpture Center, NYC; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Gruenebaum Gallery, NYC; Charles Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; the Queens Museum, NYC; The Academy of Arts and Letters, NYC; Victoria Munroe Gallery, and many others.

"Silver began to explore frontality, he was aware that since the Middle Ages, as mobility was becoming essential to the ethos of Western life, frontally had become essentially taboo. Strict frontality – that is to say frontally in which the sides of a head are symmetrical and the face is perpendicular to the ground – denies movement. A Byzantine or Egyptian head holds movement in the face and eyes, which has the effect of freezing the viewer in place. While a naturalistic head created a sense that time unfolds and that the ability to move through time and space freely is the viewer's right, frontality stops time. The aura of timelessness is essential to the religious power many frontal images have. But Silver knew there was more to frontality than this. He was fascinated by meditations on Hellenistic and Jewish culture, and from Thorleif Boman's "Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek," he absorbed the idea that for Jews, the static is always active and dynamic. When he studied the frontal head, he saw that it was inherently ambiguous: if you outline a circle (the general shape of a head) ad then draw a straight line down its center, you will see that the sides flip back and forth. In his attempt to explore mire deeply the reasons for the intense responses to frontality over the centuries, he studied the Rorschach test, whose symmetrically around a central vertical line is essential to its ability to set the unconscious in motion. Silver came to believe that exploring frontality could lead him into repressed areas where well-springs of anxiety, sexuality, insight and creativity lie. Far from denying movement, frontality could inspire images that did justice to the experience of contemporary movement by tapping emotional and psychological energies so raw and chaotic that they seemed uncontrollable." (Michael Brenson, Jonathan Silver: Heads, Sculpture Center Catalogue)

Education 1963, BS, Columbia University 1966, MA, art history, Columbia University PhD (candidate) dissertation topic: Giacometti, studied under Meyer Schapiro, Columbia University 1968–69, Edward J. Noble Fellow in Art, Columbia University

Career Silver did not begin to exhibit his work until 1976, when he was nearly 40, having begun his academic career as an art historian. Meyer Schapiro was impressed by Silver’s intellectual prowess and supported his dissertation on Giacometti at Columbia. However Silver began making sculpture seriously in the late 1960s and never completed his doctorate. He had his first one-man show at the New York Studio School in 1984. His early work in plaster focused on deconstructing and reinventing the human head. In the second half of the 1980s he became known for his ambitious immersive installation pieces composed of imposing abstract figures.

Michael Brenson of the New York Times, followed the arc of Silver's career over his lifetime and spoke at his funeral. "His attempt during the last 10 years to make his sculpture fully three-dimensional and alive from multiple points of view without losing its commanding presence – was heroic and more complex emotionally and intellectually than I can understand now."

One-person exhibitions 1984, New York Studio School, New York, New York 1986, Gruenebaum Gallery, New York, New York University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, Connecticut 1987, C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland 1988, Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Inc., NY, NY 1989, Jonathan Silver – Installation – The Lower Room, Sculpture Center, New York, New York Trinity Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia Birth of Venus, (permanent installation), Charles Center, Baltimore, Maryland 1991, Victoria Munroe Gallery, New York, New York

Selected group exhibitions 1976, Group Exhibition, 4 x 10 Gallery, New York, New York Comfort Gallery, Christopher Cairns, Bruce Gagnier, and Jonathan Silver, Haverford College, Haverford Pennsylvania 1979, New York Studio School, Jonathan Silver and Christopher Cairns, New York, New York 1986, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Art on Paper, The 22nd Weatherspoon Annual Exhibition, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina New York Studio School, Heads, New York, New York 1987, Queensborough Community Gallery, Romanticism and Classicism, curated by Lenone Malen, Bayside, New York Carlson Gallery, Bernard Center, Jonathan Silver and Judith Dolnick, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, Connecticut 1988, Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden, Wounded Amazon II (permanent installation), Minneapolis, Minnesota Triangle Arts Association, Workshop Alumni 1990, National Academy of Design, New York, New York Queens Museum, The Expressionist Surface, Queens, New York 1992, American Academy of Arts & Letters Annual Invitational, New York, New York 1993, Macon & Co., Atlanta, Georgia Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Inc., Houston, Texas

Catalogues Jonathan Silver, The Lower Room An Installation, September 5 – October 7, 1989, Essay: Donna Harkavy. American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, March 2–29, 1992, South Gallery Annex Alfred H Maurer and Jonathan Silver: An Installation, December 5, 2002 – January 25, 2003, Lori Bookstein Fine Art Jonathan Silver: Heads, Frontality and Narrative: Jonathan Silver's Heads, Sculpture Center, Curated by Michael Brenson, November 14 – December 23, 1995 Five Sculptors, Peter Agostini, Christopher Cairns, Bruce Gagnier, Jonathan Silver, and George Spaventa, March 31 – April 30, 2006, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery

Recent exhibitions 2008, C. Grimaldis Gallery, SCULPTURE, featuring Anthony Caro, John Ruppert, Annette Sauermann, Jonathan Silver, Osami Tanaka 2008, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Jonathan Silver: Sculpture 2011, Lori Bookstein Fine Art, Summer Paper

Awards 1991, The Academy Institute Award in Art, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York

Collections The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Mr. Peter Badger, Financial Advirsor at Gremillion, Houston, Texas Mr & Mrs. Rick Badger, Houston, Texas NYNEX, New York, New York The Southeastern Corporation, Atlanta, Georgia Thurston Twigg- Smith, Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (on loan to Denver Botanic Gardens) Sid Singer, Mamorneck, New York City of Baltimore, Maryland (Johns Hopkins Plaza) Weatherspoon Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Private life In 1992, Silver died of cancer. He died at the age of 54 at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan. In addition to his wife, he was survived by a sister, Sara Bunim, and a brother, David, both of Brooklyn.