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Lot Essay
Blending contemporary technology with classical technique, Barry X Ball’s sculptures are
subversive, beautiful and startling objects. Purity presents a time-honoured figure in marble
sculpture: a woman hidden behind a veil. In ancient and Renaissance marbles, sculptors turned
to this subject to display their virtuosity in the medium – as in Antonio Corradini’s Rococo
masterpiece La Purità (Dama Velata) (1717-25, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice), on which Ball’s Purity is
based, which with astonishing skill conveys the delicate, intricate transparency of the woman’s
veil, as well as her beautiful face beneath. Ball instead largely sidesteps the manual carving
process, recreating La Purità in a 3D modelling program that allows him to have the form
carved by computer, before adding some hand-finished touches. He defamiliarises Corradini’s
sculpture in a number of delicate ways: he reverses it in mirror image – a feat near-impossible
without the help of advanced technology; he adds features that allow the work to be seen ‘in
the round’, rather than only from the front; he enlarges the woman’s breasts, bringing out the
latent sensuality in Corradini’s supposedly ‘pious’ sculpture; he perfects the human errors in
Corradini’s treatment of the drapery. Computer-lathing this new, transformed La Purità in non-traditional
materials including lapis lazuli, onyx, and, in the present work, golden calcite, Ball
conjures a subtle and powerful meditation on our relationship to the art of the past, and the
hand of the artist.
Glowing in luxuriant, honeyed hues, the calcite version of Purity is particularly powerful
in its transformed medium. As Ball explains, ‘The calcite’s exuberant veination establishes
a parallel surface network, one that alternately camouflages and reveals the sculpture’s
network of folds and sweeps while adding a dizzying complexity … The translucent stones,
when carefully lit, appear to glow from within, to have an inner light that radiates outward, that
penetrates the veil. This is not possible with opaque marble. Corradini used the material that
he was familiar with, the most readily available carving stone in Italy, the one that responded
well to traditional hand-carving techniques. Because of my high-tech techniques and my
access to and knowledge of worldwide stone sources, I have many more options. I made a
concerted attempt to select stones that work with the form to create something rich and new’
(B. X. Ball, ‘Barry X Ball Masterpieces: A Collection of Selected Statements’, October 2009,
https://barryxball.com/fles/process/7.pdf).
subversive, beautiful and startling objects. Purity presents a time-honoured figure in marble
sculpture: a woman hidden behind a veil. In ancient and Renaissance marbles, sculptors turned
to this subject to display their virtuosity in the medium – as in Antonio Corradini’s Rococo
masterpiece La Purità (Dama Velata) (1717-25, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice), on which Ball’s Purity is
based, which with astonishing skill conveys the delicate, intricate transparency of the woman’s
veil, as well as her beautiful face beneath. Ball instead largely sidesteps the manual carving
process, recreating La Purità in a 3D modelling program that allows him to have the form
carved by computer, before adding some hand-finished touches. He defamiliarises Corradini’s
sculpture in a number of delicate ways: he reverses it in mirror image – a feat near-impossible
without the help of advanced technology; he adds features that allow the work to be seen ‘in
the round’, rather than only from the front; he enlarges the woman’s breasts, bringing out the
latent sensuality in Corradini’s supposedly ‘pious’ sculpture; he perfects the human errors in
Corradini’s treatment of the drapery. Computer-lathing this new, transformed La Purità in non-traditional
materials including lapis lazuli, onyx, and, in the present work, golden calcite, Ball
conjures a subtle and powerful meditation on our relationship to the art of the past, and the
hand of the artist.
Glowing in luxuriant, honeyed hues, the calcite version of Purity is particularly powerful
in its transformed medium. As Ball explains, ‘The calcite’s exuberant veination establishes
a parallel surface network, one that alternately camouflages and reveals the sculpture’s
network of folds and sweeps while adding a dizzying complexity … The translucent stones,
when carefully lit, appear to glow from within, to have an inner light that radiates outward, that
penetrates the veil. This is not possible with opaque marble. Corradini used the material that
he was familiar with, the most readily available carving stone in Italy, the one that responded
well to traditional hand-carving techniques. Because of my high-tech techniques and my
access to and knowledge of worldwide stone sources, I have many more options. I made a
concerted attempt to select stones that work with the form to create something rich and new’
(B. X. Ball, ‘Barry X Ball Masterpieces: A Collection of Selected Statements’, October 2009,
https://barryxball.com/fles/process/7.pdf).