| Achtergrond |
Robert Cook began forming wax in 1940, in his last year of studying with George Demetrios at Milton Academy, Boston, Massachusetts. Later he studied in Paris under Marcel Gaumont at the Academie des Beaux-Arts, and finally in Rome, where he has lived since 1948. He has won numerous awards, including the Prix de Rome, the National Academy of Arts and Letters award, and the Tiffany Foundation award. His huge abstract sculpture of a dinosaur is a landmark on New York’s Park Avenue at 51st Street. For large sinuous works such as this, Cook works directly with sheets of beeswax, supporting the structure with bamboo before casting. Cook came late to making medals and circles. He works directly in a sheet of wax, playing with form. ‘Where there is a raised or convex form on one face, there must be a corresponding concave form on the other to keep a uniform thickness or thinness.’ His Zebra medal for BAMS exemplifies this technique and is typical of his work in several ways. Cook is an avid student of life-drawing, especially of animals in the wild – or indeed of humans, as when playing jazz and dancing. Tension, movement, energy are the three characteristics of his bronzes. Zebra catches that still moment when the animal fixes its gaze upon you and remains absolutely motionless. But you know well that, if you move (or spin the medal), an instant later the zebra will swiftly turn and gallop away in a blur. |
