The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 33

By linking this style to the subject of sado-masochism,
Novak sexualizes his tableaux, yet portrays this through
the usually sentimental and precious china figurine
(glazed but resembling blanc de chine). Novak succeeds
in unnerving us. And while it may not be his intention,
he communicates some sense of the decadence of the
French court in which wealth and privilege allowed for
any tastes to be indulged, any services to be procured.
Melissa McGill has created a large figure out of a
small figurine of a choirboy in hood. Making a mold
of just the negative space around the small boy, she
enlarged it to nearly five feet in height and cast and
Melissa McGill, Untitled, 2002.

fired it as a single piece of porcelain. If you are not
a ceramicist you might think that such a task is all

artist himself who seems eminently sane) and de Sade

in a day’s work. But those who work in the material

actually fits chronologically; de Sade was born in 1740

know that the technical finesse required to bring

and grew up during the belle époque of the figurine.

this work safely from the kiln is remarkable.

Novak’s slyly titled Disfigurine (Competition) (2000)

It could not have been done without the John Michael Kohler

has an orgiastic presence with its nude participants

Arts Center’s Arts/Industry program at the Kohler Co. factory

doing painful things to each other. The stage on

in Kohler, Wisconsin. Even there, where large bathtubs and

which these figures perversely perform is a Rococo

toilets are produced en masse, the staff was dubious as to

base. This was a smart choice by Novak. Rococo,

whether this object with its slender attenuated form could be

also known as Late Baroque, was essentially French,

successfully produced. But they pulled it off and seeing the

a fecund, nature-based, licentious, sensual, amorous,

show of a group of these pieces in 2003 at the CRG Gallery

erotic style. It took its name from the French word,

in New York was unforgettable. It was like walking into a room

rocaille, for rock-and-shell ornamentation. While it

full of specters, their materiality appearing and disappearing

reached its peak in the 1730s, the style and its influence,

as light from the nearby window played on the surfaces.

particularly on the application of flowing, undulating
line, endured for many decades more, returning as
the mother of nineteenth-century Art Nouveau.

So far we have been enjoying the fruits of the kiln. Almost
every discussed work’s surface has been touched—and
obviously so—by the flame. The surfaces are fictile. But this

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