THREE FAVORITE WESTERN SCULPTURES (MORE)
“Awakening Slave” (1530-34) by
Michelangelo
“Night” (1902-1909) by Aristide
Maillol
“Sisyphus” (2007) by Jane McAdam
Freud
His
complete name is Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, but today he is known
simply as Michelangelo, and everything else is forgotten. One of the foremost
luminaries, together with Leonardo da Vinci, of the Renaissance, he is considered
by some as the greatest sculptor of Western civilization. Michelangelo revived classical
sculpture and some would say even perfected it.
If
Renaissance culture and art speak to us today, the message is inevitably unsatisfying,
because the Renaissance belongs to a period of history considerably removed
from our present time. We are not the children of the Renaissance. We do not
belong to the generations who had been poised for transformation at the
beginning of modern history. We are at least 500 years removed from that time.
I
guess that it is for this reason—the alienation that inevitably results from our
being separated in time—that I am challenged to find favorite pieces in art that
has been conceived so distantly in history.
Michelangelo’s
series of unfinished slaves may not have been executed with his legendary polish,
but they speak to the modern age for precisely this reason. They are works of
art in process, embodying our shifting, unsettled worldview. They lack smoothness
and finish, that is, the self-assurance of an earlier time.
“Awakening
Slave” (1530-34), so named by curators, is the most salient. Michelangelo, it
is related, said that he worked to liberate the forms imprisoned in marble.
Sure enough, this piece shows us a strapping male trapped in stone, struggling
to free himself. Michelangelo demonstrates his expert understanding of the
human figure, the male in particular, and reveals his love of the subject.
Here
the emergent form of the slave depicts the universal human condition. We are
all trapped, as it were, wrestling to be freed.
Deeply
emotive, it is almost Expressionist in style.
 |
| Awakening Slave (1530-34) by Michelangelo |
At
first glance, Aristide Maillol looks like a classical sculptor, but he is not. True,
his sculptures are naturalistic and figurative, dwelling on the female form.
However, they are not intended to be true to life. Monumental, stylized, idealized,
they are suggestively symbolic.
Bordering
on abstraction, Maillol is considered a precursor of Henry Moore. Maillol, like
Auguste Rodin, is transitional and modern.
“Night”
(1902-1909) impresses upon us the expressive power of the human form. Seated,
geometrically almost a cube, the heavy, reposeful, quiescent figure indicates a
state of monumental rest.
Maillol’s
seated figure communicates a message that resonates in its individual parts,
some of which are shown here in detail. The folded arms, the broad back, even
the dutiful toes convey withdrawal with rejuvenation.
 |
| Night (1902-1909) by Aristide Maillol |
 |
| Night, detail |
 |
| Night, detail (feet) |
“Sisyphus”
(2007) by Jane McAdam Freud is a remarkable piece of contemporary sculpture. Freud
portrays the tragic protagonist from Greek myth, Sisyphus, imprisoned by the
gods, endlessly laboring in a task eternally unfinished.
Kneeling,
hands pushing against the rock, his desperate condition is shown as irreversible
and permanent. Almost one with the jagged stone, he emerges from the surface in
relief, incapable, ironically, of even the least movement. Our vantage from the
rear offers us, unusually, a look at the soles of his feet and his raised
shoulder blades. The work is assembled from several large blocks.
Combining
original expressive elements, Freud offers us a figurative work of tremendous power,
monumental in conception.
 |
| Sisyphus (2007) by Jane McAdam Freud |
Images are posted on this website according to principles of fair use, that is, they are posted for the purposes of information and education. Also, the analysis and commentary directly refer to the images.
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of this blog is, among others, to advance knowledge and to create culture, for public benefit.
Gonzalinho
Images - credits:
ReplyDelete“Awakening Slave” (1530-34) by Michelangelo, courtesy of Fordham Art History:
https://michelangelo.ace.fordham.edu/items/show/209
“Night,” detail (feet), courtesy of rocor, cropped:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rocor/5494329143
Gonzalinho
WALKING MAN II (1960) by ALBERTO GIACOMETTI
ReplyDeleteWalking Man II (1960) by Alberto Giacometti is a quintessential icon of twentieth-century alienation.
The twentieth century has been one of the most destructive in human history. World War II, the most ruinous war of the last century, ended in approximately 70 to 85 million deaths, of which an estimated 50 to 55 million were civilian deaths. Under Adolf Hitler six million Jews were killed in a genocide known as the Holocaust.
World War I was not far behind on the scale of destruction. It resulted in an estimated 15 million deaths, of which six million were civilian deaths.
World War I was an imperialist war among the Western powers. World War II began as a war of conquest of China by Japan.
Competing political ideologies was one of the major underlying reasons for the war in Europe. Germany and the Soviet Union, which championed the two totalitarian ideologies of fascism and communism, respectively, each brawled for the extermination of the other.
Other exceptionally destructive wars took place, including the Russian Civil War at the beginning of the century, and in the second half of the century, the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
In what has been characterized as the Age of Social Catastrophe, existentialism—a philosophy of alienation—took root in Europe before burgeoning after the Second World War.
This philosophy, which took as its starting point the anguish of human existence, concluded with the dreadful challenge of making meaning out of a world absent of certitudes, the peoples of the West flailing about bereft of answers.
Giacometti’s solitary, attenuated figure is the visual equivalent of existentialism.
He has been described by the art historian Tatyana Kalaydjian Serraino as “spindly,” “withered,” “skeletal,” “vulnerable,” “intense,” “emaciated,” “gaunt,” “disturbing,” and “haunting”—all pointedly appropriate.
Fashioned of bronze, his highly textured surface is “dark,” “mottled,” and “corroded.”
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl3iXGgniYg
—AboutArt, “ALBERTO GIACOMETTI'S 'THE WALKING MAN II': A sculptor's take on human nature...,” YouTube video, 9:42 minutes, September 30, 2020
The man strides forward alone, traversing the wasteland of the twentieth century.
Walking Man II is among the last in a series of multiple figures similarly conceived by Giacometti.
The first version of the motif, Woman Walking, was created in 1932.
Gonzalinho