{"id":45679,"date":"2019-07-01T08:29:05","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T14:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=45679"},"modified":"2019-07-03T08:40:02","modified_gmt":"2019-07-03T14:40:02","slug":"45679","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/45679\/","title":{"rendered":"Karl Momen’s “Homage to William Shakespeare” Does and Doesn’t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

“Richard III”<\/p><\/div>\n

We know him \u2014 if we know him at all \u2014 as the creator of \u201cMetaphor: The Tree of Utah,\u201d the 87-foot tall sculpture that surprises travelers driving through the Bonneville Salt Flats along Utah\u2019s I-80. But Karl Momen is more than this one-hit wonder (or miss \u2014 people tend to mock or ignore the piece; few love it; not like they love “Spiral Jetty” or “Sun Tunnels”). Momen has had a long and fruitful career. He grew up in Mashad, Iran, where he was influenced equally by Persian miniatures and the abstract patterns in the rugs his father sold; he was a bit of a child prodigy, commissioned to paint portraits of both Stalin and the Shah while still in his teens; he went to Germany to study, where he was influenced by the Bauhaus and Surrealism, then to Sweden for what was meant to be a short-term architectural project but ended up becoming a career (and a nationality \u2014 he took Swedish citizenship). He walked away from his architectural practice after a decade to devote himself to painting and sculpture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the late nineties, Momen was inspired to create two related suites of work, one dedicated to Shakespeare and one to Wagner, which he later published together in a book. The \u201cHomage to William Shakespeare\u201d suite is currently on exhibit at the Southern Utah Museum of Art, an appropriate venue considering the opening of the Utah Shakespeare Festival this month. The eight works are all the same size (67\u201d x 67\u201d), medium (oil on canvas) and palette (grays, blue and browns, with striking red accents). They also use a similar visual vocabulary: an undefined background space divided by two strong verticals \u2014 sometimes accented to look like columns \u2014 and floating near these symbolic attributes to identify characters \u2014 a tartan for Macbeth, a laurel crown for Julius Caesar. It\u2019s a vocabulary \u2014 strongly by the ideas of the Constructivists \u2014 used in his paintings and also related to his sculpture: look at the span of his work and the strong vertical and suspended spheres of \u201cMetaphor: Tree of Utah\u201d begin to look familiar. <\/span><\/p>\n

With a strong family resemblance throughout the works and enough unique elements to identify an individual play, Momen\u2019s visual strategy in \u201cHomage to William Shakespeare\u201d would work great as a branding campaign for a troupe looking to design playbills for a season. It would have to be a season devoted to tragedies and history plays, however: all the works referenced are bloody, hence the flash of red that appears in each. Slipping <\/span>Love\u2019s Labour Lost<\/span><\/i> or <\/span>A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/span><\/i> into the campaign might prove difficult. <\/span><\/p>\n

As a contemplative work of art, the suite is less successful. Tucked as they are in the back of SUMA\u2019s exhibition space with inadequate space or lighting, the paintings are done no favors, but one imagines they would not impress a great deal more under better conditions. They don\u2019t seem to say anything specific about a given play. They identify without revealing. When an artist develops an individual style, it usually is very good at doing certain things; but it cannot say or express all things, no matter how important or inspiring the subject might be. Momen\u2019s exhibit is up during this year\u2019s festival, and the museum is free, so worth a visit. But your insights into the plays will have to come from attending them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“Julius Caesar”<\/p><\/div>\n

Karl Momen: Homage to William Shakespeare<\/em>, Southern Utah Museum of Art<\/a>, Cedar City, through October 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We know him \u2014 if we know him at all \u2014 as the creator of \u201cMetaphor: The Tree of Utah,\u201d the 87-foot tall sculpture that surprises travelers driving through the Bonneville Salt Flats along Utah\u2019s I-80. But Karl Momen is more than this one-hit wonder (or miss \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[1020,2799],"class_list":["post-45679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-karl-momen","tag-southern-utah-museum-of-art"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/SUMA-KarlMomen-Richard-iii-1996.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-12 07:31:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45683,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45679\/revisions\/45683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}