Description:

Lin Emery (American/New Orleans, b. 1926), "Flower Dance", 1990, polished aluminum, signed on self-base, h. 47 in., dia. 16 in., granite pedestal, overall h. 71 in. Provenance: Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, 1992; Koch Collection, Metairie, LA. Note: The narrative of Lin Emery’s work from the static to the animated is a compelling one. In 1949, a sojourn in Paris would mark the inauguration of Lin Emery, the sculptor. Inspired by her mentor, Ossip Zadkine and the Romanesque works in the Musée de l’homme, Emery would incorporate the aesthetics and ideologies of both into her early religious works. Back in her adopted home of New Orleans as a studio assistant to Enrique Alferez, she was approached by the Father Judge Mission Seminary to create a series of sculptures for their church in Virginia. The resulting works are elongated and elegant figures representing familiar religious characters. In 1952, Emery would attend the Sculpture Center in New York and learn how to weld and cast metal. There her main influence would be Seymour Lipton and his textured welded forms. With metal being her newfound medium of choice, Emery focused her efforts on making it move. Inspired by the small fortuitous incident of witnessing a drop of water hit a spoon and make it rock in her kitchen sink, Emery focused her efforts and engineering ingenuity into building moving water forms she dubbed “aquamobiles.” This would be her first foray into kinetic sculpture. In 1965, Emery began experimenting with magnets, which she would hide in both the individual elements of her works and in the hidden motorized base, the rotation of which would cause sporadic, undulating movements. While the “aquamobiles” and “magnetmobiles” were effective in their capacity to convey a certain vitality, they would prove too constraining in their reliance on electricity and pumps. It was her 1977 discovery and subsequent usage of ball bearings in her works that would transform the way her sculptures move, giving them a freedom and autonomy that was unattainable previously. With this new lightness in articulation, she took to the wind, which would prove her most reliable source of movement. In the lots offered here, an early “magnetmobile” dances hauntingly on a stand, and both a small and large-scale petal form sculpture spin and whirl in an unpredictable, yet elegant frenzy. Ref.: Palmedo, Philip F. Lin Emery. Manchester: Hudson Hills, 2011.

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September 9, 2017 10:00 AM CDT
New Orleans, LA, US

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$1,000 $2,999 $100
$3,000 $9,999 $250
$10,000 $49,999 $500
$50,000 $999,999 $5,000
$1,000,000 $1,999,999 $10,000
$2,000,000 $2,999,999 $15,000
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