Lincoln to Tubman to JFK, Alum Sculpts US History’s Most Famous Figures
This article was first published in Bostonia on December 3, 2021. By Sara Rimer.
EXCERPT
Ivan Schwartz tells stories about American history through his sculptures, which stand in museums and public spaces across the nation, depicting historical figures from Thomas Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence to Abraham Lincoln to antislavery crusaders Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. On Saturday, December 4, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., will unveil Schwartz’s latest work—a seven-foot-tall bronze sculpture of President John F. Kennedy (Hon.’55), which the center commissioned in honor of its 50th anniversary celebration.
Schwartz (CFA’73) and his team began their yearlong work on the sculpture at StudioEIS, in Brooklyn, which Schwartz runs with his brother, Elliot, and sister, Debra, and they completed the statue at the UAP Foundry in upstate New York. The siblings pride themselves on the deep research behind their work—their team includes historians as well as sculptors, costume experts, foundry partners, and other specialists. “While most people are looking for the mythical singular talent, when my brother and I set up the studio, we knew this wasn’t what it was about, that it would be a collaborative effort, requiring the talents of many people,” Schwartz says.
The StudioEIS team has completed work commissioned by a number of institutions, including the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Women’s Monument in Richmond, Va., and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.
Schwartz, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens and on Long Island, has been a visual storyteller for half a century. He is the recipient of a College of Fine Arts Distinguished Alumni Award, a former member of the CFA dean’s advisory board, a past president of Innovators in America, and the author of a visual memoir, Scratching the Surface (7 Days Publishing, 2021).
Bostonia talked with him about the new statue, his creative process, and how CFA ignited his passion for sculpting.
Q&A with Ivan Schwartz
Bostonia: How old is JFK in your statue and how did you think about how to represent him?
Ivan Schwartz: He’s in his early 40s. We looked at just about every single photograph of JFK that we could find and we watched film of him. The first part of our job was to suggest an attitude for the sculpture. What we didn’t want to do was to create a site of mourning.
Kennedy was telegenic. The camera loved him. He was enormously attractive, compelling, vigorous. We wanted to represent that vigor—having him walking, smiling, very naturalistically, the guy we remembered. He’s got his left hand on his jacket. He used to play with his coat buttons; that was one of the idiosyncratic things he did.
What about Kennedy’s hair—how did you handle that?
Kennedy had extraordinary hair, which was very thick, very well groomed. You can only approximate that. While we can make almost facsimile copies of clothing, we use clay to sculpt hair and hair doesn’t really want to be re-created in clay.
How did BU and CFA shape you as an artist?
I remember taking my first sculpture class and thinking, this is it. I had two really great sculpture teachers, Elbert Weinberg and Harold Tovish. When I finished my senior year at BU, in sculpture, Tovish said, “You’re the one who’s got the talent, you need to go to New York and become the next great figurative sculptor.” It’s very heady stuff when your professor says that. I had great training in classical study in terms of academic art. After I graduated, I spent a year in New York working as a laborer, making money so I could go to Italy. I spent a year in Italy working in quarries and foundries. That was my graduate school.