Margaret Swan
born 1954, Baltimore, MD
works in Melrose, MA
Tempietto, 1992, aluminum, 75 x 46 x 50", Lent by the Artist
Margaret Swan's Tempietto is a mysterious object with multiple sources of inspiration for the artist and associations for viewers. Its title—literally, "little temple" —refers specifically to Donato Bramante's small, circular, domed and colonnaded High Renaissance chapel of the same name in Rome, and more generally to a host of subsequent domed architectural fantasies that culminated in the nineteenth-century American gazebo. Its deconstructed architectural forms, arranged in a slowly spiraling composition, also refer to body armor, futuristic and expressionistic architecture, and Cubist sculpture of the early twentieth century. Constructed of aluminum with a rich surface treatment suggesting wood, the sculpture points simultaneously to the past and to the future. It also acts as a vessel of sorts. Tempietto thus partakes of many architectural and sculptural vocabularies, held in an elegant tension. This work is also meant to be entered, and provides a quiet, meditative interior space for individual visitors.
