Escobar's Family

    A work that I found particularly compelling at the Currier Museum of Art was Marisol Escobar’s The Family, 1963. This work, in the Contemporary Art wing, complemented Jande Bray's Banquet of Anthony and Cleopatra (1667). In Bray's work, Cleopatra can throw a better party, gathering those close to her. Escobar's piece is a wooden sculpture of a stylish, 1960s mother with gloves and a pillbox hat. She is walking with her husband and four children. One of the children, a young girl, is wearing a red dress and holding a self-portrait of the artist. While the mother and daughter stand out, the husband and children are flat, wooden boxes.
    The mother’s breasts are prominent, showing the focus of the family on female sexuality and child rearing. The father, by contrast, is two dimensional and less accessible. The effect enhances his height and makes him somewhat scary. This is a clear metaphor for fatherhood in some families. The infants are inaccessible because of their stage in life. The young children are three-dimensional in contrast, and the girl in the red dress holds a picture of the artist, showing how her interest in art can transport people to a different world. The child has a fully developed imagination, and is standing on a third leg. These aspects make Escobar’s work a metaphor for the traditional 1960s family.