KIKI SMITH SCULPTURE ACQUIRED FOR THE FOGG ART MUSEUM

For Immediate Release May 20, 1997

The Harvard University Art Museums is proud to announce the acquisition of a major sculpture by one of America's most important contemporary artists. Kiki Smith's Pee Body, 1992, was purchased by the Art Museums jointly with Barbara Fish Lee of Brookline, Massachusetts and Emily Rauh Pulitzer of St. Louis. Both Barbara Lee and Emily Pulitzer have promised to give their shares in the sculpture to Harvard and the work will become part of the Fogg Art Museum's permanent collection.

"We are ecstatic about this acquisition," director James Cuno said. "Not only is it a powerful work by one of our generation's leading artists indeed perhaps her most important work to date but it shows that we are committed to extending our collections into the future with the same commitment to quality that has marked the building of our collections to date. That Barbara Lee and Emily Pulitzer should join us in this acquisition is a sign of their generosity and we are truly honored to be their partner in this endeavor."

Pee Body comprises a wax figure of a full-size crouching woman with strands of yellow glass beads flowing out behind. Its wax material and disturbing subject matter the frank depiction of a private, banal, human act recall the late sculptures of Edgar Degas. Like Degas's depictions of women bathing, stretching their limbs, or combing their hair, Smith's Pee Body is unidealized in its rendering of the human figure yet profoundly moving in its compact, explosive form and expressively sculpted surface complete with touches of red on the toenails, fingernails, and nipples.

In its powerful depiction of the human form, Smith's work can also be compared to that of Rodin, especially the female figures on the Gates of Hell or the Iris, Messenger of the Gods, with its frank depiction of the naked female figure in flight with legs akimbo. Finally, Smith's work can be compared to her older contemporary, Louise Bourgeois, and her exact contemporary, Robert Gober. Although more surreal and abstract, Bourgeois's work also explores the basic life forces of women through powerful depictions of the female body. Gober, on the other hand, in his realistic, wax sculptures of the fragmented human form, shares with Smith an interest in the aesthetic effects of frankness and banality turned in the process of sculpture-making into alarming expressions of human frailty.

"We are very happy to be able to add this significant work to our important collection of modern sculpture," Cuno remarked. "We are widely known for having the greatest public collection of the work of the modern American sculptor, David Smith, and equally important sculptures by Degas, Rodin, Matisse, Brancusi, Maillol, Beckmann, and Calder, as well as Sol LeWitt, Joel Shapiro, and Ellsworth Kelly. Now we have added our first great work representing the end of the century's return to an intense interest in the expressive, human figure."

Formerly in the collection of the Boston Children's Heart Foundation, Pee Body will be kept in Boston by the purchase by the Harvard University Art Museums, Barbara Fish Lee, and Emily Rauh Pulitzer.