Rangy Stepchild

The Philadelphia Museum of Art played host to a motionless throng last week: 252 figures stood about the main hall and on the museum terrace. They were there for Philadelphia's Third Sculpture International (previous shows were held in 1933 and 1940) and a share of the award-money.

The awards, amounting to $65,000 in commissions and purchases, would not be announced until the exhibition closed in September. Meanwhile, flesh & blood visitors could wander amidst the best contemporary sculpture of 13 countries and pick their own favorites.

Big & Little. The first big international sculpture show in the U.S. since World War II, it was far too big and varied for quick & easy trend-spotting. Critics confined themselves largely to discussing individual works, observed in passing that the show was roughly divided between monument-type statues and the more economical table-top models, and that neither the abstract left wing nor the representational right wing succeeded in dominating the show. Prices set by the sculptors ranged from $125 for a baby bear by Muriel Kelsey to $24,000 for Spring Stirring, a compact carving in black diorite by California's Donal Hord.

The American entries alone provided dozens of provocative contrasts. From such hard-to-make and hard-to-take abstractions as David Smith's tortuous steel Cello Player (the work of a onetime war-plant welder), visitors could turn to such literary hardware as Mitzi Solomon's aluminum Family of Man Totem. Among the best of the relatively representational items were Alfeo Faggi's leggy, high-breasted Eva, Koren Der Harootian's Slave, Burr Miller's classic marble nude La Victoire, and William Steig's tiny, self-effacing Elderly Man.

The European entries had variety and vigor too. France's Ossipe Zadkine contributed Menades--fragmentary fleeing figures that seemed closer to cubist painting than to most sculpture. Russian-born Jacques Lipchitz, who now lives in Greenwich Village, submitted Sacrifice, a handsomely ugly bronze of a man knifing a rooster; the disturbing thing about Sacrifice was that, stared at a while, the man began to look like a rooster, the rooster like a man.

Sharp & Tired. Yet the hits of the show seemed to be two less well known Italian sculptors, both in their 40s and both art teachers in Milan. Francesco Messina had sent a polished bronze Pugilatore, done in the old Roman tradition of sharp realism. Pugilatore had the punch-dazed, flat-footed weariness, the slumping shoulders of a bantamweight turning back to his corner after the tenth round.

Marino Marini's entry was Cavaliere, a horse and rider that appeared to have just paused in the middle of a saddleless, bridleless journey. The horse, whose plump body and delicate, spindly legs were more Chinese than European, stood with its neck stretched straight out; the flowing horizontal from its muzzle to its tail was unbroken except by the rider, who looked both babyish and brave--lonely, puzzled and somehow heroic.

Works like Pugilatore and Cavaliere are uncommon enough at any time. Taken with the rest of the Philadelphia show, they seemed to argue that contemporary sculpture, long an ill-paid stepchild of the arts, is a rangy, lively fellow.

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