Vision of Harmony

Baizerman's remarkably alive, hammered copper sculpture fits easily into no school or style. A native of Russia who fled to New York in 1910, he fused the traditions of craft and the expressive potency of Rodin into hollow, figurative forms that meld the once-separate categories of relief and sculpture-in-the-round. Like fragments from a lost civilization, these beautiful pieces speak powerfully to us today, whether in the interlocking monumental shapes of Crescendo , the sensual harmonies of Nereid or the crystallizations of serenity, hope, muted grief, joy, loneliness. Copper fumes in the studio led to the cancer that killed Baizerman in 1957. Although his work is in museum collections, he remains virtually unknown. Splicing together Finn's inpired photographs and an essay by art historian Dabakis, this album does justice to a neglected body of work. ( July )