#1 of 3

A Dramatic Coup in Classical Sculpture

By Thomas Albright

Dan Snyder is a sculptor who surfaced in the local galleries shortly after his graduation from UC-Davis five or six years ago, with big ceramic figure pieces that suggested the ruins of some ancient Mediterranean civilization the archaeologists had not uncovered yet.

During many of the years since, Snyder has been studying and working in Italy, thanks in part to a Prix di Rome. Any fears that he would become intimidated by so much direct contact with the real thing, however, are thoroughly put to rest by Snyder’s exhibition of recent sculpture at the Allrich gallery, Two Embarcadero Center.

In fact, in these works, Snyder has pulled off a dramatic and genuine coup: producing a kind of caricature of classical figure sculpture, and in the process creating a classical expression of his own. Not, by any means, the quiet, eternally calm kind of classicism, but the kind of classical sculpture that soars and lifts and practically bursts at the seams with self-confident, exuberant vitality.

Snyder has moved from ceramic — and from wood; specifically, big, rough-hewn telephone pole timbers, the medium of his last exhibition here — to a combination of materials. The new pieces seem to be constructed primarily of mixtures of paper, cheese cloth and lots of gel medium, stretched over concealed armatures, but it is difficult to tell for sure because these “skins” are themselves largely hidden under layers of paint. Generally, it is of an off-white or off-black cast, although the apparent uniformity is usually relieved by subtle marblings or spare, deft touches of color.

The forms frequently resemble those of Snyder’s previous sculptures. The figures, reduced to the essentials of volume and gesture, are “modeled” with an apparently quiet, ruggedly direct spontaneity, their features abbreviated to a shorthand of hollows and planes.

What is new about these pieces is their sense of robust playfulness, coupled with an extraordinary feeling of vigorous, almost acrobatic movement. A funky, “classical” column rises three or four feet off the floor and then branches into the legs of a towering figure, who contemplates a bright red, apple-like object in his outstretched hand. A second figure balances a capitol atop its head. Another triumphantly raises up its arms, one hand bearing a ridiculous, stubby wooden sword, the other a cardboard shield upon which is painted a crude, man-in-the-moon face. There are figures that wear Indian headdresses, and there is one figure fashioned principally out of a broad plank.

So it goes, through a remarkable variety of attitudes and gestures, each deftly exaggerated to an end that most often is as witty as it is formally forceful.

In the past, Snyder’s sculpture has been somber in tone, with a kinship to the work of Manuel Neri and Giacometti, but the high-spirited exuberance of these comic-heroic figures suggests that he may have spent most of his time in Italy examining Marini. Whatever the case, his show is a veritable gallery full of Don Quixotes.

San Francisco Chronicle

#2 of 3

ARTnews

Volume 77, Number 1 — January

San Francisco

Hall of Comic-Heroes

A major strain of Bay Region art has involved the manufacture by artists of their own more or less elaborately conceived “civilizations,” of which they are not only the “Creator Gods,” but the principal historians, archeologists and anthropologists.

One thinks of David Gilhooly’s “frog” cultures, and the far-out fossils of “Dr. Gladstone,” himself a figment conceived by ceramist Clayton Bailey; of Robert Arneson’s parodies of classic monuments, and of the more somber paraphrases of antiquity by Manuel Neri and Stephen deStaebler; of the more hermetic mythologies developed by Bruce Conner, William T. Wiley and Roy de Forest.

Dan Snyder, a sculptor and a former student of Neri’s, introduced his own version of civilization in his first Bay Area show five years ago, with a collection of ceramic sculpture that shared Neri’s and deStaebler’s solemnity and some of their uses of forms. Snyder has spent a good part of his time since then working and studying in Italy under a Prix de Rome, but any fears that he might become intimidated by so much contact with classical antiquity in the flesh, or in the marble and bronze, would have been thoroughly put to rest by an exhibition of his recent work at the Allrich Gallery.

Snyder’s new figure pieces were constructed of various materials, mostly mixtures of paper, cheesecloth and lots of gel medium, stretched over concealed armatures to form “skins,” themselves largely hidden under layers of thick, but subtly worked paint. The forms, reduced to essentials of volume and gesture, were “modeled” with an apparently rapid, ruggedly direct spontaneity, the features abbreviated to a shorthand of hollows and planes.

Most striking about these new works, however, is their sense of robust playfulness, coupled with an extraordinary feeling of vigorous, almost acrobatic movement. A larger-than-life figure balances a capitol atop its head; another raises its arms in triumph, one hand grasping a ridiculous, stubby wooden sword, the other clutching a cardboard shield bearing a crudely painted, man-in-the-moon face. So it went, through a remarkable variety of attitudes and gestures, a veritable hall of comic-heroic figures much in the spirit of Marini. In their exaggeration, they amounted to a kind of caricature of classical figure sculpture that succeeded in becoming a classical expression in its own: exuberant, self-confident, practically bursting with vitality.

#3 of 3

Out of the piazzas with extra pizzazz

By Arthur Bloomfield

Dan Snyder, the local sculptor, spent two recent years in Rome, and he obviously took some good hard looks at the classical statuary in those delightful Roman piazzas. But judged by the high whimsicality level of his new show at the Allrich Gallery, Two Embarcadero Center, he didn’t let dignity go to his head.

Snyder’s latest sculptures—“bashed and pounded,” as he puts it, out of mixed media including papier mache, wire, fabric, wax and paint—are a friendly collection of tall, soaring figures entitled New Ancestors. Many of them are optimistic types, and some just shout about dance joy. Several of the group bare a breast to the world’s breezes, take in a deep, ecstatic breath, and seem to say, “It’s great to be alive.”

And some are comically pompous: one sculpted person stands on a globe, like Mercury on an old telephone book cover, and sports a Doric capital for a hat, as if he were about to be tendered some honorary degree at an elite university. Another figure can’t decide whether he’s a person or an antique column; like a mythological creature, he begins as one and ends as the other.

Snyder hasn’t let dignity go to his head

The Allrich show is not Snyder’s first to hark back to antiquity. But prior to his Roman trip his retrospective views were more taken up with fragmentation and decay. It’s good to see him arrive on a sunnier sculptural plateau.

Evidently Snyder’s upbeat mood was well established in Rome, where he fixed a garden with cement figures that look like the bouncy, zig-zaggy Dancing Men in the Sherlock Holmes story of that name. Logistical problems have prevented hauling the cement series to San Francisco, but the Allrich gallery staff will be happy to show you pictures.

A final Snyder note: It’s difficult to study his work without thinking of the life-sized, similarly painted-over figures of Manuel Neri. But Snyder’s sculpture seems more personal, as well as less sensuous.

S.F. EXAMINER- Page 25 Tues., Nov. 22, 1977