"[I am] trying to make exactly what I see in front of me."
"…Graham's tightly focused realism results in a form of idealization. Though distinct, recognizable individuals, the women depicted are inevitably transformed—through the bronze medium and reduced scale-into generic beings: types of beauty. In turn, this idealized beauty verges on the unearthly. Confronted by a Graham figure, the viewer is caught between the desire to embrace and the impulse to worship and, more than anything else, becomes aware of the subtle, underlying ambiguities that give Robert Graham’s statues their own particular sense of life."
From a tape-recorded interview between Robert Graham and Graham Beal, at the artist's Venice, California studio, September 1981 and February 1982. Published in Robert Graham, Statues, by Graham W.J. Beal and George W. Neubert, Walker Art Center, 1981.
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