Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
John Scholl
American; 20th-century
Rochester, NY: Memorial Art Gallery
89%
Crested Swans. c1910. Wood and paint
Scholl's one of those classic semi-modern figures who started tinkering in his old age and stumbled into making a handful of untutored masterpieces. This sculpture is exceptional for how much it has going on without appearing overbusy, and for how its perfect symmetrical structure doesn't seem at all stifling or schematic, but rather infinitely varied. These achievements are a result of Scholl's precise sense of rhythm and massing: there is always just the right amount of space left unadorned between clusters of dense decoration (see the spokes in the semicircle at the sculpture's crest, or the bare segment of dowel between the birds' beaks and that sphere of light blue). Additionally, there are all these vague little affinities and structural repetitions that take place throughout the object, from the echo of the swans' necks in the arch of the table's legs, to the recurrence of the spade-shapes up top in the two pendent anchors a bit lower down. Forms, in this sculpture, appear to be at once unfaltering and in a state of constant transformation. (2025)