Hair on Fire, a new limited-edition sculpture by artist Dana Schutz and published by Lisa Ivorian-Jones, was generously created by the artist to benefit the Hessel Museum of Art at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard). This extraordinary and enigmatic sculpted bust of a young girl with her hair on fire is also the artist’s first clay sculpture to be cast in Hydrocal cement. Bright white in appearance with the hardness of concrete, Hydrocal lends the sculpture a raw and lush immediacy, appearing like plaster or packed snow.
Each edition indelibly preserves the marks that were formed in the original clay sculpture by Schutz’s palms, fingers, and sculpting tools. When illuminated, the sculpture captures light and shadow akin to chiaroscuro, creating a relationship to the artist’s drawings, particularly her works in charcoal. The bust also evokes archetypes of femininity throughout art history, such as Nefertiti. In Hair on Fire, the girl’s inner world is closed off to us, and the curlicues of smoke encircling her head belie her placid demeanor.
At this time in our country and world in which women’s fundamental rights and safety are greatly at risk, the title takes on a deeper meaning. It comes to convey a state of utmost emergency — a fever pitch of unsustainable fury. Hair on Fire sends a grave message that is also cut with the artist’s characteristic humor: the plume of smoke on the bust’s left shoulder could be mistaken for a corsage, rather than a gaseous cloud — a girl on her way to her high school prom.