Michael Tracy: SCULPTURES AND INSTALLATIONS
Horace Brockington
Michael Tracy remains one of the most distinctive sculptors/artists of his generation. Extremely private, but equally intense during the 80s and early 90s Michael Tracy created a body of sculpture that defied the minimalism and conceptual tendencies of the time. Tracy has lived in TRexas for much of his life. Since l978 Tracy has lived in a small border town of San Tgnacio Texas, no easy site to reach. But its location bordering between Texas and Mexico seems appropriate for an artist whose works aim to fuse southwestern culture and the Hispanic traditions of the MesoAmerica.
Michael Tracy art is both representational and abstract— abstract in the sense that it is without image and representational elements despite the fact Tracy employs actual objects in his sculpture and installations, -swords, knives, human hair, flowers, etc. These objects reference makes allusion to opposing polemics— violence, and despair, courage and faith, tradition and change.
He is equally interested in the physicality of the objects. He has pierced, stained, torn and covered the sculptural and pictorial skin of his works. This act can be viewed as a type of dismembering of the human form given since the 1970’s Tracy’s art has been concerned with what he has describes as the “human essence”. Terrence E. Dempsey has noted that some of Tracy artworks bears affinities to the performances of contemporary Austrian artist Herman Nitsch whose ritualistic disemboweling and tearing to pieces of “sacrificial animals” were intended to be rituals of sublimation of humanity basic violent tendencies.
Creating a mysterious world of the sacred and desirous Tracy’s body of works have consisted of sculptures, canvases, crosses, altarpieces, collages, and installations. It is a world filled with magenta, indigo, gold, oxide green, pink, and brown – colors that proposed intricate meaning and fills the space and objects with temperament.
While his individual objects has often intrigued, it in his installations and chapel-like constructions in which Michael Tracy’s art has its strongest and deepest impact. The viewer is pulled into a sacred world whose themes equally evoke ideas of earthly passion and rapture. Tracy’s installations fuse elements of Latin American Roman Catholic iconography with an obsessive interest in the ritualistic connections between religiosity and physicality. This is not surprising given the complex duality of sacrificial rites of indigenous Meso-American cultures and of Mexico Roman Catholic conquerors have continuously provided the focus of Tracy’s artistic explorations and commentary.
Thomas McEvilley and Edward Leffingwell, the curator of Tracy’s l987-88 traveling retrospective “Terminal Privileges” (presented in New York at the PS.1 Museum) has noted that Tracy’s work attempts to fuse a host of artistic traditions and artists ranging from Duccio, Giotto, Caravaggio, Hugo van der Goes and Mark Rothko, Antonin Artaud (founder of the “Theatre of the Cruel” “ in the earlier part of the this century), filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini and filmmaker, artist, writer and leader of a militant Japanese radical right wing group Ukio Mishima. Similar to many in this group Tracy views himself as the sacrificial artist.
Despite these influences what clearly directs the work is Tracy’s deep interest in Mexican and MesoAmerican cultural heritage. Throughout the years this influence has kept his work imbued with a strongly religious character. However, part of its religious undertone is derived from Tracy’s own Catholic upbringing and also by the Catholic faith as experienced and understood by the Hispanic cultures. Tracy has constantly referred to himself as an artist deeply committed to the unjust suffering of millions of people that expresses itself in the liturgy and consecration.
In l977 Tracy began constructed a series of freestanding large-scale crosses, works that reflected the Hispanic devotional practices. He has acknowledged that it was through these works that he was able to represent without figuration the reality of suffering people. One of the most outstanding in the series is dedicated to Archbishop Romero, who was gunned down by Salvadoran right wing death quads in l980 as he was celebrating mass. “ Cruz to Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador” (l981-82) is approximately six feet in height, created to resemble a processional piece complete with carrying handles. From its cross-beam and two huge horn spikes (positioned where the hands of Christ were secured) are hung woven fabric cords at the end of which are devotional panels that evoke scapulars. Protruding from the cross are bulls’ horns. Ed Leffingwell as suggested that the horns could be seen “as signs of dangerous potency or as symbols of the ritual sacrifice of the bull in Latin culture”. Terrence Dempsey has likened them to Picasso’s use of the bull in Guernica as a statement about the realities of human brutality.
The carrying handles of this cross are wrapped in a fabric very similar in color to that of the bishop’s robes as well as the colors used during the seasons of Advent and Lent. The fabric has been worn thin and is stained with human perspiration. By this device Tracy achieves a fusion of the viewer experiencing the work as the real symbol of suffering. Not only does it reference the unique experience of Romero, but extends the concept of anguish and suffering to those in the Americas who for economic or political reasons have been and continue to bear crosses.
Despite these influences what clearly directs the work is Tracy’s deep interest in Mexican and MesoAmerican cultural heritage. Throughout the years this influence has kept his work imbued with a strongly religious character. However, part of its religious undertone is derived from Tracy’s own Catholic upbringing and also by the Catholic faith as experienced and understood by the Hispanic cultures. Tracy has constantly referred to himself as an artist deeply committed to the unjust suffering of millions of people that expresses itself in the liturgy and consecration.
In l977 Tracy began constructed a series of freestanding large-scale crosses, works that reflected the Hispanic devotional practices. He has acknowledged that it was through these works that he was able to represent without figuration the reality of suffering people. One of the most outstanding in the series is dedicated to Archbishop Romero, who was gunned down by Salvadoran right wing death quads in l980 as he was celebrating mass. “ Cruz to Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador” (l981-82) is approximately six feet in height, created to resemble a processional piece complete with carrying handles. From its cross-beam and two huge horn spikes (positioned where the hands of Christ were secured) are hung woven fabric cords at the end of which are devotional panels that evoke scapulars. Protruding from the cross are bulls’ horns. Ed Leffingwell as suggested that the horns could be seen “as signs of dangerous potency or as symbols of the ritual sacrifice of the bull in Latin culture”. Terrence Dempsey has likened them to Picasso’s use of the bull in Guernica as a statement about the realities of human
Despite these influences what clearly directs the work is Tracy’s deep interest in Mexican and MesoAmerican cultural heritage. Throughout the years this influence has kept his work imbued with a strongly religious character. However, part of its religious undertone is derived from Tracy’s own Catholic upbringing and also by the Catholic faith as experienced and understood by the Hispanic cultures. Tracy has constantly referred to himself as an artist deeply committed to the unjust suffering of millions of people that expresses itself in the liturgy and consecration.
In l977 Tracy began constructed a series of freestanding large-scale crosses, works that reflected the Hispanic devotional practices. He has acknowledged that it was through these works that he was able to represent without figuration the reality of suffering people. One of the most outstanding in the series is dedicated to Archbishop Romero, who was gunned down by Salvadoran right wing death quads in l980 as he was celebrating mass. “ Cruz to Oscar Romero, Martyr of El Salvador” (l981-82) is approximately six feet in height, created to resemble a processional piece complete with carrying handles. From its cross-beam and two huge horn spikes (positioned where the hands of Christ were secured) are hung woven fabric cords at the end of which are devotional panels that are bulls’ horns. Ed Leffingwell as suggSalvador” (l981-82) is approximately six feet in height, created to resemble a hands of Christ were secured) are hfrom the cross are bulls’ horns. Ed Leffingwell as suggested that the horns could be seen “as signs of dangerous potency or as symbols of the ritual sacrifice of the bull in Latin culture”. Terrence Dempsey has likened them to Picasso’s use of the bull in Guernica as a statement about the realities of human Terrence Dempsey has likened them to Picasso’s use of the bull in Guernica as a statement about the realities of human Terrence Dempsey has likened them to Picasso’s use of thties.
