Reuben Nakian was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 sculptor and teacher

Teacher

A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

 of Armenian

Armenians

Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....

 extraction. His recurring themes are from Greek and Roman mythology. Noted works include Leda and the Swan, The Rape of Lucrece, Hecuba, and The Birth of Venus. He was also commissioned to create portraits of Roosevelt's cabinet in the 1930s.

In 1915, Nakian studied at the Independent School of Art in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 as well as the Robert Henri School

Robert Henri

Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...

 with Homer Boss and A.S. Baylinson. Later he studied at the Art Students League of New York

Art Students League of New York

The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...

 and was apprenticed to Paul Manship

Paul Manship

Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...

.

Nakian met and befriended painters Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky

Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.-Early life:...

 and Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....

 in the 1930s and Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist.-Early life and education:Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, where his English parents had settled. He was the youngest of nine children. His mother died when he was eight, and his father remarried four years later to Martha...

 and Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

 in the 1940s. Poet Frank O'Hara

Frank O'Hara

Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara was an American writer, poet and art critic. He was a member of the New York School of poetry.-Life:...

 was the curator of a major Reuben Nakian retrospective at New York City's Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 in 1966 where the artist was also exhibited in 1930. In the exhibition's catalog, O'Hara noted:

Nakian is unrepressed, un-neurotic, unabashed in his approach to sensuality, however tortuous his esthetic commitment, and whether his subject be death, bestiality, or Arcadian dalliance. This explicitness gives the "Nymph and Satyr" plaques a marvelous joy and ease, the "Europa" terra-cottas a voluptous dignity, and the "Leda and the Swan" drawings an almost comic abandon. Unlike most sexually oriented images in modern art, from Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...

 to Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

, one finds no guilt or masochism in a Nakian. It is outgoing and athletic even in its releases and defeats: the satyr, the bull, the swan, the goat are each circumvented or absorbed by the goddess of his choice in the most choice of circumstances, that of his own choosing, like the amorous "dying" of the Elizabethans or the Metamorphoses of Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

.

Work

Nakian's work is in the collections of DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (http://www.decordova.org/decordova/sculp_park/nakian.htm), Fogg Art Museum

Fogg Art Museum

The Fogg Museum, opened to the public in 1896, is the oldest of Harvard University's art museums. The Fogg joins the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum as part of the Harvard Art Museums....

 (http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/collections/servlet/webpublisher.WebCommunication?ia=codetail&ic=basic&oid=11581&sq=1&tr=1&tech=&name=Nakian,%20Reuben&title=&objtype=&medspt=&dtfrom=&dtto=¢ury=&credit=&cult=&accnum=&pic=yes&aid=2938&icurrpage=1&isrc=singleartist), Honolulu Academy of Arts

Honolulu Academy of Arts

The Honolulu Academy of Arts is an art museum in Honolulu in the state of Hawaii. Since its founding in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke and opening April 8, 1927, its collections have grown to over 40,000 works of art.-Description:...

, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...

 (http://americanart.si.edu/search/search_artworks1.cfm?StartRow=1&ConID=3486&format=short&db=onlyart&LastName=&FirstName=&Title=&Accession=&Keyword), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...

 (http://hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/search.asp?Artist=Reuben+Nakian&Title=&Date=&Nationality=&School=), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...

, Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....

 (http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=browse&dept=prints&method=artist&searchtype=2&term=Nakian%2C%20Reuben), Nassau County Museum of Art

Nassau County Museum of Art

The Nassau County Museum of Art is located 20 miles east of New York City on the former Frick Estate, a property in Roslyn Harbor in the heart of Long Island’s Gold Coast. The main museum building, named in honor of art collectors and philanthropists Arnold & Joan Saltzman, is a three-story...

 (http://www.nassaumuseum.com/outdoor/outdoor_sculpturegallery.htm), Neuberger Museum of Art, Oklahoma City Museum of Art

Oklahoma City Museum of Art

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art is a museum located in the Donald W. Reynolds Visual Arts Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA. The museum features visiting exhibits; original selections from its own collection; a theater showing a variety of foreign, independent, and classic films each week;...

, University of Arizona Museum of Art

University of Arizona Museum of Art

The University of Arizona Museum of Art is an art museum in Tucson, Arizona, operated by the University of Arizona. The museum's permanent collection includes some 5,000 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings....

, University of Michigan Museum of Art

University of Michigan Museum of Art

The University of Michigan Museum of Art, or UMMA in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the USA. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall originally housed U-M's Alumni office along with the...

 (http://images.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?cc=musart;page=browse;key=musart_asn;c=musart;back=back1177935856;value=Nakian%2C%20Reuben;exact=1), Guilford College Art Gallery (http://www.guilford.edu/artgallery/Collect/Artlist/N/Nakian/Nakian.htm), Saint Joseph College Art Gallery, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its neoclassical architecture and extensive collection of Asian art....

, Sheldon Art Gallery(http://www.sheldonartgallery.org/collection/search.html?topic=list&search_var=Artist&clct_artist_full_name=Reuben+Nakian&clct_id=6217), Walker Art Center

Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...

 (http://collections.walkerart.org/item/agent/471), National Gallery of Australia

National Gallery of Australia

The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...

 (http://www.nga.gov.au/International/Catalogue/Default.cfm?MnuID=SRCH&GalID=ALL&ArtistIRN=22576&Alpha=N
), Portland Art Museum

Portland Art Museum

The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it the oldest art museum on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the United States. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum became one of the twenty-five largest art museums in...

, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art

Boca Raton Museum of Art

The Boca Raton Museum of Art is located at 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, Florida in Mizner Park. It houses works of art by a number of the great masters.-About:...

.

Teaching

Nakian taught at Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts

Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts

Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts was a city-run vocational and art school in Newark, New Jersey. Opened in 1882 as the Evening Drawing School, its name was changed in 1909 to the Fawcett School of Industrial Arts, and changed again in 1928 to the Newark Public School of Fine and...

 and at Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 in New York City.

Books

• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists, (New York School Press, 2000); ISBN 0-9677994-0-6. pp. 33, 38, 262-5

External links

• Transcript of 1981 interview with Nakian