TitleMonument
Artist
Lawrence Fane
(American, 1933 - 2008)
Date1996
MediumPoplar wood
DimensionsOverall: 68 × 50 3/4 × 21 1/2 in.
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, March 19, 2003
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2003.3
Label TextBorn in Kansas City, Lawrence Fane showed artistic promise at a young age and was encouraged by his family. After high school, however, he intended to become a doctor and enrolled in a premedical program at Harvard University. During his senior year in college Fane took a drawing and sculpture course with George Demetrios that would alter his life. Following graduation, Fane initially enrolled in medical school but after only a few days decided instead to pursue his true calling and entered the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There he worked under Demetrios, who would soon become a mentor, and followed a traditional art curriculum of drawing and sculpting from the figure. In 1960, the young artist won the prestigious Rome Prize, allowing him to study at the American Academy in Rome for three years. Living in Italy expanded Fane's visual literacy tremendously and it stimulated a period of rapid maturation in his work.Upon his return to the U.S. Fane began teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1966, he joined the faculty at Queens College, where he would remain for more than thirty years. By the 1970s Fane's work had taken a decided turn toward abstraction, and his earlier practice of combining steel and concrete diminished as he began to work almost exclusively with welded steel. In the early 1990s Fane encountered the drawings of engineer and artist Mariano Taccola (1382-ca. 1453), and in 1993 he spent ten months in Los Angeles studying facsimiles of Taccola's notebooks, which inspired him to write a scholarly article on the inventive and unique qualities in Taccola's drawings. This period of study and the absence from the metal-working facilities of Fane's New York studio resulted in a series of carved and constructed imaginary objects that recall the spirit of Taccola's drawings and appear to be mysterious implements of another world.
"Monument" was created two years after the artist returned from Los Angeles and while it is less Taccola-inspired than some of the other pieces from that period, it does relate to the work he was doing in California. Devoid of the mechanical references present in much of the artist's sculptures from the mid-1990s, "Monument" still retains the metaphysical qualities inherent in all of the artist's work of the last decade. Typical of Fane's sculpture, there is something both familiar yet enigmatic about the piece and its monolithic presence, abstract form, and referential title all suggest an object of grave solemnity. Indeed, "Monument" is an extremely personal work that was created after the loss of a close friend and inspired by a specific tombstone. Its sepulchral formality and stele-like composition allow it to transcend temporal constraints. As Barbara MacAdam has noted, "It's a touching reminder of continuity between the past and the present, tradition and modernity."
