About the Exhibition
Kama Sutra by Ronald Bladen (1918-1988, b. Vancouver, British Columbia) is one of the three works he designed as part of the exhibition Ronald Bladen: Outdoor Sculpture Proposals, organized by the Hudson River Museum. Grace Glueck of The New York Times described Kama Sutra as a “white, geometric form supported by two black buttresses [that] looms on Grand Army Plaza.” The other two works, Untitled and Rockers, respectively “consist of two planes lying at angles to each other in a giant “T” on the Bronx River Parkway, and a two twenty-foot columns on three “rocking” forms in the courtyard of the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers. Richard Koshalek, director of the Hudson River Museum, described the three pieces as the continuation and exploration of traditional architecture. He said, “Traditionally, architects have been interested in the nature of space as enclosure for human function or habitation; but several contemporary sculptors have now taken up this same investigation of the nature of space as defined by surrounding objects—and as it is perceived in relationship to these objects, themselves spatial elements.” Bladen described the works as “an attempt to deal with the grand scale of the city. It really points to the sky. If you follow the line of the piece, you become involved in the skyscrapers—it opens up a whole vista of sky and buildings and the world up there.” Bladen’s three pieces heighten New Yorkers awareness of the visual environment, and provide an opportunity for the public to view an important creative work as it relates to the diverse architectural surroundings of its site.