tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/sculpture-9127/articles
Sculpture – The Conversation
2024-02-28T16:52:45Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/224661
2024-02-28T16:52:45Z
2024-02-28T16:52:45Z
Odysseus moon landing: Jeff Koons has pulled off one of the great art stunts of the century
<p>To <a href="https://www.creativereview.co.uk/refreshes-the-parts-other-beers-cannot-reach/">paraphrase</a> an old advertising slogan, <a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/jeff-koons">Jeff Koons</a> is the Heineken of the art world – a maverick who has always done his utmost to refresh the parts other arts cannot reach. Born in Pennsylvania in 1955, Koons has now achieved something truly out of this world: sending his art into space as part of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/22/us-moon-landing-odysseus-intuitive-machines">Odysseus moon landing</a> last week.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pacegallery.com/journal/jeff-koons-moon-phases/#:%7E:text=The%20list%20of%20names%20is,and%20Helen%20Keller%20among%20them.">Moon Phases</a>, a cube-shaped transparent box containing 125 spherical mini-sculptures (each approximately 2.5cm in diameter) over five levels, landed on the lunar surface on February 22, on board the US spacecraft.</p>
<p>Each sphere contains the name of a (dead) human luminary, ranging from Aristotle to Ghandi, Ada Lovelace and David Bowie, all decided on solely by Koons. You can see the full list <a href="https://jeffkoonsmoonphases.com/explore">here</a>.</p>
<p>Moon Phases is now being described as the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-koons-sculpture-first-artwork-on-the-moon-notable-figures-2024-2?r=US&IR=T">first “authorised” work of art on the moon</a>. Digital arts and technology company NFMoon and 4Space, a space company with strong links to NASA, approached Koons with the idea of sending his artwork to the moon <a href="https://www.pacegallery.com/journal/jeff-koons-moon-phases/">because</a> of “his ability to bridge art and science, reflecting the expansive possibilities of the humanities”. </p>
<p>Or perhaps the two companies understood well that the controversial American artist would provide some extra rocket fuel for their project. Koons is, after all, the man who <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/artist/koons-jeff/#:%7E:text=%22The%20job%20of%20the%20artist,That's%20where%20the%20art%20happens.%22">proclaimed</a>: “The job of the artist is to make a gesture and really show people what their potential is. It’s not about the object, and it’s not about the image; it’s about the viewer. That’s where the art happens.” </p>
<p>Still, it is hard to imagine – even ignoring the practical challenges – that this will lead to a whole host of artists queuing up and begging NASA to send their art into space, but it makes perfect sense for the hero of the hour.</p>
<p>Koons, who currently holds the world auction record for a living artist, courtesy of his <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/jeff-koons-rabbit-breaks-auction-record-most-expensive-work-living-artist-180972219/">Rabbit sculpture</a>, which sold for US$91.1 million (£72m) in 2019, has always been as much a media phenomenon as anything else. He is arguably more famous for having been married to Cicciolina, the Italian former porn star-turned politician, than for any of his creations. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A US spacecraft on legs designed to go to the moon." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578611/original/file-20240228-32-50c34x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=791&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Odysseus lunar landing craft.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IM-1#/media/File:Intuitive_Machines%E2%80%99_Nova-C_lunar_lander_(IM_00309)_(cropped).jpg">NASA Marshall Space Flight Center/Intuitive Machines / Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>He may sound kitschy and a bit ridiculous, but he is hard to resist. Having borrowed one of his pieces – Basketball (1985) – for a history of bronze sculpture over the last 5,000 years exhibition I organised at the Royal Academy in London in 2012, I ought to know. </p>
<p>However, recently his prices (as measured by auction sales, prices achieved in private sales are not in the public domain) have plummeted. In fact, last year almost 40% of the 292 Koons lots offered at auction <a href="https://news.artnet.com/market/jeff-koonss-art-is-on-the-moon-but-his-prices-have-cratered-can-power-players-reignite-his-market-2436175#:%7E:text=Last%20year%20was%20particularly%20bad,offered%20failed%20to%20find%20buyers.">failed to find buyers</a>. So he has every reason to want to revitalise his professional fortunes – his actual fortunes are probably less of a worry, given that estimates of his personal wealth hover around $400 million.</p>
<p>What’s more, terrestrial equivalents of the moon sculptures in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are being offered by his gallery, Pace, and it may be assumed they are not exactly being given away. </p>
<h2>So who’s on the list?</h2>
<p>Arguably the most interesting thing about the whole circus is the fact that each sculpture carries somebody’s name (with the exception of one called Atom). At some level, the idea is that if aliens come upon Moon Phases, they will be equipped with a handy list of the best of the best in human history. In the meantime, the rest of us can brood on Koons’s choices. </p>
<p>The work itself explains neither their selection nor their configuration, but the vast majority fall into straightforward enough categories, such as religious leaders, rulers, philosophers and scientists. But there is also a striking US emphasis on abolitionists and black leaders. In the performers category – with the exception of Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova – are all either from the US or the UK.</p>
<p>Within each category, many of the choices are predictable enough (Jesus and Buddha, Plato and Aristotle, and so on), but others are more baffling. In the context of the arts, there are only four composers (JS Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky), there are no novelists from the periods between Austen and Proust, and there is room for <a href="https://www.nga.gov/features/verrocchio-closer-look.html">Andrea del Verrocchio</a>, an important but slightly obscure 15th century Italian sculptor, but none for old masters like Vermeer or Velázquez.</p>
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<p>Last but not least, a very small section is avowedly given over to personal favourites, a selection that includes such oddities as actor Lucille Ball and art dealer Ileana Sonnabend.</p>
<p>The obvious party game here is compiling one’s own top 125 and seeing where it agrees and disagrees with Koons’. And it would be no less fascinating to speculate who might have made the list had one accompanied Neil Armstrong’s “one giant leap for mankind” on 20 July 1969. Intriguingly, explorers Columbus and Magellan, flight pioneer Amelia Earhart and 19th century Native American guide <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sacagawea#:%7E:text=Sacagawea%20was%20an%20interpreter%20and,River%20to%20the%20Pacific%20Coast.">Sacagawea</a> are in for Koons – but Armstrong doesn’t make the cut.</p>
<p>What is abundantly clear is that 55 years ago there would undoubtedly have been fewer women and people of colour included. Perhaps it could be said that our far-from-perfect species has managed to improve itself over the past half-century or so. </p>
<p>But in terms of art itself, this is a masterstroke of self-promotion on the part of Jeff Koons, and perhaps an achievement that will inspire the next generation of artists to view space as a new frontier for their work.</p>
<p>For the 69-year-old Koons, clearly fame is a seductive experience – perhaps wealth is not enough if you no longer feel relevant or important. It seems the kitschy New York artist has pulled off one of the great art stunts of the century. So far.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Ekserdjian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Has Jeff Koons’ latest high-profile stunt just proved that space is the new frontier for art?
David Ekserdjian, Professor of History of Art and Film, University of Leicester
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/215600
2024-01-02T20:16:14Z
2024-01-02T20:16:14Z
When you sit down to build a sandcastle, take a look around you: the beach is already sculpting
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562331/original/file-20231129-24-7zibnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C3988%2C5946&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/brown-rock-on-brown-sand-during-daytime-oG_hQ7nQje0">Thomas Williams/Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Arenicola, or lugworms, make some of the most beautiful structures on the beach. Little piles of wet sand are cast in a swirl from their rear end as part of their feeding cycle. </p>
<p>They are but one of an untold number of other participants in the constant evolution of forms at our water’s edge. Co-contributors include the wind, birds, rain, foliage, foot traffic and detritus, all shaping sand and associated debris into mini peaks and troughs, lines, blobs and tracks. </p>
<p>The forming of grains into what we commonly call a sandcastle on the other hand, speaks to a particularly human intentionality. Centred around the activity of building, these edifices rise and fall through a wild negotiation of the intent of a person and the intent of the materials they work with. </p>
<p>This dynamic and fickle nature of the granular shells, quartz, coral, glass and rock is perhaps its greatest appeal. Accrued since childhood, our knowledge of sand’s properties sits deep within our personal sculptural memory. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Piles of tubes made of sand." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562328/original/file-20231129-21-q1zu3w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Lugworms make some of the most beautiful structures on the beach.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<h2>In collaboration with the beach</h2>
<p>Building a sandcastle is a response to the full beach environment as a collaborator. We attune ourselves to the quality of the sand, marvel at the comings and goings of the water and orient our construction for the wind’s abrasive blast. </p>
<p>We are vigilant to dogs’ unintended mark making, and backward running ball catchers who involuntarily progress our work from castle to ruin. Moulds that reproduce their internal structure can be the age-old bucket, or the form can be loosened up using towels, sandals, buckets or a friend’s back … and perhaps said friend can be embedded in the structure if required. </p>
<p>We can include tunnels (that will sadly collapse) and moats and complete our work with a final (for me) infuriating flourish of seaweed and sticks. </p>
<p>No one methodology will explain to the uninitiated how to undertake the making of a sandcastle, and this is how it should be. Adopting an attentive mindset can open the possibilities for this immersive and bodily task.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-art-uses-plastic-recovered-from-beaches-around-the-world-to-understand-how-our-consumer-society-is-transforming-the-ocean-187970">My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean</a>
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<h2>Attending to sand</h2>
<p>Particular qualities of sand can be revealed to those who remain aware. Building a sandcastle on a day after the rain can change the material and the way it presents. </p>
<p>Rain falling from the sky onto fine sand creates a crispy layer over the drier sand below. It is the crunchy feeling underfoot for those daily pioneers to the beach who arrive before these fragile structures are trampled underfoot. Rain creates a crust that would be difficult to produce any other way. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A beach after rain." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563488/original/file-20231204-25-ys9df3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rain creates a crust that would be difficult to produce any other way.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>This and other states of sand could be considered on a continuum of material behaviours, from dry to wet, from dispersed to grouped, from fine to coarse, from quartz, through skeleton, to shell, or from a <a href="https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1502-non-newtonian-fluids">Newtonian to a non-Newtonian fluid</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bcsands.com.au/sand_guide">In construction</a> there is sharp sand, fat sand and sand of specific dimensions. The sand at the beach is the sand of that beach, undifferentiated by industrial ecologies and taken at its face value. Sluggish waterlogged mass, or blow away dust structure, compact sand, beige, black or grey – its specific qualities determining the outcome as much as the plan we bring to the task. </p>
<h2>Working against collapse</h2>
<p>Making objects with sand at the beach is a most egalitarian form of art making. Critiques of our constructions are generally of the generous kind. Passersby will applaud the magnitude of our creation, share in the joy as water fills our castle’s moats, and laugh shamelessly when the whole structure collapses. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sand castle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563493/original/file-20231204-27-1gzbvs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Making objects with sand at the beach is a most egalitarian form of art making.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Sand workers on the beach can adopt a critical position relative to the way the sand acts and be mesmerised by its characteristics as these present themselves. We can understand that sand slumps in a particular way, and compact it in anticipation. Or we can simply burrow furiously as it falls off in great slabs. Each reflects the personal attitude of the builder; neither is better than the other.</p>
<p>Seagrass, kelp, stones, glass and the egg sacs of moon snails may all present themselves for inclusion in a sandcastle. Driftwood will break through hard sand, create moats, or delineate space; large shells make excellent tools for moving bulk material, although using the body for scooping and compacting, or shoving and dragging, is perhaps the ideal way to engage the senses in the job. Collapse is the thing you work against. </p>
<p>Digging down and water begins to pool, piling the sand high and your castle begins to emerge.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-sand-play-4-tips-from-a-sculptor-195209">How to get the most out of sand play: 4 tips from a sculptor</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215600/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Friedlander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Building a sandcastle is a response to the full beach environment as a collaborator.
Mark Friedlander, PhD Candidate, Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/194335
2023-12-10T19:07:20Z
2023-12-10T19:07:20Z
How an underwater sculpture trail plays a role in the health – and beauty – of the Great Barrier Reef
<p>The widespread demise of coral reefs due to climate change is <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf">now a certainty</a>. But what role does art have in our future for coral reefs? </p>
<p>Art is about feelings. One of the great challenges today is that we often feel untouched by the problems of others and by global issues like climate change. This is where art can make a difference.</p>
<p>Engaging with a thoughtful work of art can connect you to your senses, body and mind. Art can be used as a tool to raise awareness, promote conversation and rally behind a cause. </p>
<p>One way this is happening on the Great Barrier Reef is through an underwater sculpture trail. Here reef sculptures are drawing attention to inspirational scientists, the science of climate change, reef restoration, citizen science and traditional culture.</p>
<h2>What are reef sculptures?</h2>
<p>Reef sculptures are a form of artificial reef: man-made structures placed into an aquatic environment to mimic certain characteristics of a natural reef.</p>
<p>Artificial reefs were historically deployed for fishers and divers to concentrate marine life and to shift pressure from other popular locations.</p>
<p>Artificial reefs take many forms, such as reef balls, pods, concrete pipes, wrecks and sculptures. They can be sites of ecological research, conservation and arts and culture.</p>
<p>The first modern reef sculpture was created by Jason deCaires Taylor at Grenada in the West Indies in 2006. This sculpture aimed to provide a restorative response to a damaged marine ecosystem and enhance marine tourism. </p>
<p>The largest underwater sculpture in the world is the <a href="https://www.moua.com.au/">Museum of Underwater Art</a> created with deCaires Taylor at John Brewer Reef, offshore from Townsville. The Coral Greenhouse is a skeletal building made from pH-neutral cement and corrosion-resistant stainless steel. It covers an area of 72 square metres and weights 165 tonnes, with eight human figures depicting scientists, conservationists and coral gardeners.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/10/11/1617">recent report</a> on this sculpture found statistically significant increases in fish abundance and diversity. There were no changes over time in invertebrate abundance, invertebrate diversity and tourist perceptions of aesthetic values.</p>
<p>Structural designs of underwater sculptures need to be able to adapt into the surrounding natural landscape, creating a transition point from the manufactured to natural. </p>
<p>Small intricate matrices provide protection for small fish. Textured planters encourage coral restoration efforts by scientists.</p>
<p>But there are still <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3298/10/7/121">gaps in our knowledge</a> in how effective artificial reefs are for potential local, regional or global impact by increasing awareness of coral reef decline and positive actions.</p>
<h2>Government policy bans underwater sculptures</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://elibrary.gbrmpa.gov.au/jspui/bitstream/11017/4011/1/FINAL-Policy-on-Fish-Aggregating-Devices-and-Artificial-Reefs.pdf">new Reef Authority policy</a> on fish-aggregating devices and artificial reefs has banned the creation of new underwater sculptures on the Great Barrier Reef.</p>
<p>Its report found artificial reefs are “not compatible” with the main objective of the Marine Park Act, which is “to provide for the long-term protection and conservation of the environment, biodiversity and heritage values of the Great Barrier Reef Region”.</p>
<p>Instead of artificial reefs, the <a href="https://elibrary.gbrmpa.gov.au/jspui/bitstream/11017/3287/1/GBRMPA%20Blueprint%20for%20Resilience%20-%20Low%20Res.pdf">authority recommends initiatives</a> that include ramping up crown-of-thorns starfish control, strengthening compliance, enhanced protection of key species for reef recovery, and testing and deploying methods for reef restoration.</p>
<p>But since 2017, the community, artists, traditional owners, citizen scientists, the tourism industry and local, state and federal governments have supported <a href="https://www.dtis.qld.gov.au/tourism/funds/growing-infrastructure/museum-of-underwater-art">the Museum of Underwater Art</a>.</p>
<p>This museum has provided jobs and revenue, raised awareness and amplified <a href="https://www.dtis.qld.gov.au/tourism/funds/growing-infrastructure/museum-of-underwater-art">important messages about reef conservation</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-crown-of-thorns-starfish-can-survive-heatwaves-thats-yet-more-bad-news-for-the-great-barrier-reef-215543">Young crown-of-thorns starfish can survive heatwaves. That's yet more bad news for the Great Barrier Reef</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The positive impact of the reef sculpture</h2>
<p>We have been surveying the life at the Museum of Underwater Art since 2018.</p>
<p>In 2018 (pre-installation), 2020 (post-installation), 2021 and 2022, divers recorded species and abundance of individuals sighted.</p>
<p>In 2018, 12 species and 65 individual creatures were recorded at the location of the museum. The <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/10/11/1617">2022 survey</a> found 46 species and 365 individuals. </p>
<p>The site has also become a <a href="https://reefecologic.org/project/moua/#:%7E:text=Bringing%20life%20to%20the%20Coral%20Greenhouse&text=On%2014%20March%202021%2C%20Reef,131%20corals%20on%20treatment%20locations">reef restoration demonstration site</a>. Planting corals on underwater sculptures is an innovative method of linking art, science, tourism, education and conservation. </p>
<p>Coral gardening is a reef-restoration technique modelled on terrestrial gardening. Small cuttings of coral colonies, called fragments, are transplanted from the surrounding reef to populate the new artificial reef. The corals help to rapidly transform the art installation into a biotic location.</p>
<p>In March 2020, 131 corals were transplanted onto Taylor’s sculptures. After one year, 91.6% of the coral survived. </p>
<p>Our research on planting corals in relatively deep water of 18 metres has been challenging and innovative. Interestingly, the results are better than for shallow-water coral projects, which average an 80% survival rate after one year.</p>
<p>We also assessed tourist attitudes to the artificial reef. We found high satisfaction with the art, coral and fish observed at the site.</p>
<p>Interestingly, tourists in the Whitsundays rated <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357916065_Innovative_local_response_to_cyclone_damaged_reef_leads_to_rapid_tourism_recovery">the beauty of underwater art</a> higher than the beauty of natural reefs.</p>
<h2>Reaching new hearts</h2>
<p>Katharina Fabricious, a senior research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-18/museum-of-underwater-art-great-barrier-reef-ocean-sentinels/102337556">says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Conservation needs to be communicated in a whole range of different ways, and art is reaching people that scientists sometimes cannot reach.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The future of the Museum of Underwater Art is uncertain due to its classification as an artificial reef. The renewal or refusal of the many permits required for the artworks will be considered in the context of the new policy. It means this is the largest and possible the last underwater sculpture in the Great Barrier Reef.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/concern-for-the-great-barrier-reef-can-inspire-climate-action-but-the-way-we-talk-about-it-matters-216992">Concern for the Great Barrier Reef can inspire climate action - but the way we talk about it matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194335/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Smith through Reef Ecologic Pty Ltd receives funding for research from the Australian and Queensland Government. He is a voluntary Board member of the not for profit Museum of Underwater Art Pty Ltd</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Cook through Reef Ecologic Pty Ltd receives funding for research from the Australian and Queensland Government. </span></em></p>
Reef sculptures are a form of artifical reef: man-made structures placed into an aquatic environment to mimic certain characteristics of a natural reef.
Adam Smith, Adjunct Associate Professor, James Cook University
Nathan Cook, Marine Scientist, James Cook University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212755
2023-09-06T15:08:00Z
2023-09-06T15:08:00Z
Missing objects leave British Museum facing historic crisis of custodianship – but case is far from unique
<p>Since mid-August, the British Museum has been mired in a controversy over the theft of up to 2,000 objects from its collections. The theft is suspected to be an inside job that took place over a period of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/25/artefacts-stolen-from-british-museum-may-be-untraceable-due-to-poor-records">20 years</a>. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66582935">Alerted</a> to the sale of alleged stolen items in 2021, the museum did not take action until earlier this year. </p>
<p>This is not the first time the Museum has come under fire and its custodianship has been <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-the-british-museum-thefts-stolen-goods-vf7tf2wt6">questioned</a> (paywall). This article turns its attention to some notorious incidents involving the curation of its collection. </p>
<h2>The Duveen scouring</h2>
<p>There can be little doubt that the most notorious of them is the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-26357-6_6">Duveen scouring scandal</a>, so-named after Joseph Duveen, an ultra-rich art dealer of dubious ethics and benefactor of the British Museum. For a long time, museum officials had argued that the Parthenon marbles had better remain in Bloomsbury, because the Greeks were unable to care for them. That argument was abandoned sometime after it was revealed that back in the late 1930s the museum had scraped the marbles with abrasive tools, destroying their historic surface, its pigments and traces of toolmarks. </p>
<p>Ancient Greek temples were richly painted but remnants of colour were not to Duveen’s liking. A trustee of the British Museum <a href="https://books.google.fr/books/about/The_Crawford_Papers.html?id=55RnAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">described</a> Duveen’s attitude at the time:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Duveen lectured and harangued us, and talked the most hopeless nonsense about cleaning old works of art. I suppose he has destroyed more old masters by overcleaning than anybody else in the world, and now he told us that all old marbles should be thoroughly cleaned – so thoroughly that he would dip them into acid. Fancy – we listened patiently to these boastful follies …’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Duveen’s men were given free access to the museum and were even allowed to give orders to staff. Soon, in a misjudged attempt to whiten what remained of the originally polychrome decoration, they started to scrub the marbles. The ‘cleaning’ lasted for fifteen months before it was stopped in September 1938. An internal board of enquiry convened at the time came to the conclusion that the resulting damage <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-26357-6_6">‘is obvious and cannot be exaggerated’</a>. </p>
<p>Tactical considerations prevailed: it was important to avoid a blow to the museum’s reputation, so it kept quiet and denied that anything untoward had occurred. Documents related to the affair became, to all intends and purposes, classified. The marbles were later placed in the Duveen Gallery, named in honour of the man responsible for the damage to their historic surface.</p>
<p>The cleaning was kept a secret for 60 years until it was <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lord-elgin-and-the-marbles-9780192880536?cc=fr&lang=en&">exposed</a> by the British historian William St. Clair in 1998. Previously in favour of the retention of the marbles in the British Museum, St. Clair became one of the most vocal proponents of their repatriation.</p>
<p>The Duveen scouring was not the only modification of the marbles to cause consternation. A series of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-26357-6_6">letters</a> published in <em>The Times</em> as early as 1858 expressed concern about ‘scrubbing’ of the marbles and blamed the museum for ‘vandalism’. It is probable that, if these early warnings had been headed, the Duveen scandal could have been avoided.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546662/original/file-20230906-18-82zip7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546662/original/file-20230906-18-82zip7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546662/original/file-20230906-18-82zip7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546662/original/file-20230906-18-82zip7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546662/original/file-20230906-18-82zip7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546662/original/file-20230906-18-82zip7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546662/original/file-20230906-18-82zip7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The painting ‘Pheidias showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his friends’ by Lawrence Alma-Tadema gives an idea of what the decorative scheme of the original frieze may have looked like. For instance, it is thought that the background of the frieze was probably blue, as imagined by the artist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1868_Lawrence_Alma-Tadema_-_Phidias_Showing_the_Frieze_of_the_Parthenon_to_his_Friends.jpg">Creative Commons/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Other controversies</h2>
<p>Other incidents have tarnished the British Museum’s reputation. Documents released under freedom of information legislation show that in the 1960s and 1980s members of the public and a work accident <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1490023/Revealed-how-rowdy-schoolboys-knocked-a-leg-off-one-of-the-Elgin-Marbles.html">permanently damaged</a> figures from the Parthenon’s pediments. </p>
<p>During a 1999 conference in the museum, a sandwich lunch was served in the Duveen Gallery, and the delegates were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/dec/01/maevkennedy">encouraged to touch</a> the ancient sculptures. Many among those present found the gesture so inconsiderate that they walked out of the gallery. A journalist writing for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/02/world/london-journal-on-seeing-the-elgin-marbles-with-sandwiches.html"><em>The New York Times</em></a> commented: ‘On Seeing the Elgin Marbles, With Sandwiches’.</p>
<p>Another controversial incident was the 2014 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/world/europe/elgin-marbles-lent-to-hermitage-museum.html">secret loan</a> of the pedimental statue of the river god Ilissos to the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, at a time when Europe had imposed sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea. The loan was not announced until the statue had been transferred to Russia.</p>
<p>A controversy of a different kind concerns contested objects in the museum’s collection that are the object of repatriation requests. In contrast with other institutions, such as the V&A, the British Museum has been facing a chorus of restitution claims concerning very specific objects in its collection. The Museum has staunchly refused to engage in the debate, although since the beginning of the year it has been attempting to convince Greece to accept a <a href="https://theconversation.com/debate-sorry-british-museum-a-loan-of-the-parthenon-marbles-is-not-a-repatriation-199468">‘loan’</a> of the Parthenon marbles, apparently considering this to count as entering the repatriation debate. </p>
<p>Of course, the Museum is bound by the 1963 <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/24">British Museum Act</a>, which prevents the museum from deaccessioning (disposing of) objects in its collections except on limited grounds, but that is a discussion for a different article. </p>
<h2>The museum’s current troubles</h2>
<p>Now the British Museum is trying to repair the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-the-british-museum-thefts-stolen-goods-vf7tf2wt6">dent to its reputation</a>, which comes at an inconvenient time when the museum is hoping to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-british-museum-interim-boss-revealed-and-what-he-really-thinks-about-the-elgin-marbles-9s6zvgxnq">raise £1 billion</a> for much-needed renovation work. </p>
<p>About half of the museum’s <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/fact_sheet_bm_collection.pdf">8 million</a> items are <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection">uncatalogued</a> and this lack of an inventory has certainly facilitated the thefts. The fact that it took so long to discover the thefts also raises the question of what else might have gone missing without a trace. </p>
<p>Yet one can’t help but wonder: Do the museum’s current woes have other museum directors fretting with anxiety? How many museums have uncatalogued items in their storerooms? When a museum such as the Louvre explains that its database has entries for <a href="https://collections.louvre.fr/en/page/apropos">almost 500,000 works of art</a>, is that its entire collection or just a percentage of its collection? In a great number of cases, we simply don’t know. </p>
<p>The British Museum has yet to announce the exact number of stolen objects. But how does one know the exact number of what has gone missing without an inventory? More challenging still, how does one identify the objects, let alone <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/25/artefacts-stolen-from-british-museum-may-be-untraceable-due-to-poor-records">prove ownership</a>? </p>
<p>The secrecy is highly unusual. Sharing information about stolen objects helps identify and recover these objects. Interpol maintains an accessible database of stolen artworks precisely for that reason. But in order to enter an object in the database, it has to be <a href="https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Databases/Stolen-Works-of-Art-Database">‘fully identifiable’</a>. And the issue here is that the museum is probably still trying to identify what has gone missing. How do you fully identify an uncatalogued unphotographed object?</p>
<p>The secrecy could be attributed to another cause too. What if some of the identified stolen items are contested items that have been the object of restitution requests? For the time being, we can only speculate. </p>
<h2>Crisis as an opportunity</h2>
<p>Every crisis is an opportunity, and here too there is an opportunity. After the resignation of the director Hartwig Fischer, an interim director, Mark Jones, has been appointed. The permanent post is up for grabs. Among those <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-british-museum-interim-boss-revealed-and-what-he-really-thinks-about-the-elgin-marbles-9s6zvgxnq">mooted</a> for the museum’s top job is Tristram Hunt, the Director of the V&A, who appears to have been behind the initiative to revise museum deaccessioning laws. The selection of the next Museum Director is a crucial step in moving towards a modern British Museum that not only renovates its galleries but rebuilds its image in accordance with the new values of the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catharine Titi ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>
From ill-thought renovation schemes to the latest row over the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles, this is not the first time the British Museum reckons with a custodianship crisis.
Catharine Titi, Research Associate Professor (tenured), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202476
2023-07-20T12:28:35Z
2023-07-20T12:28:35Z
A sculptor of wind explains how to make fiber dance far above city streets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/519873/original/file-20230406-22-dv2imt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In 2018, Echelman's sculpture 'Earthtime 1.78 Madrid' premiered in the Spanish capital.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-art-installation-featuring-a-net-sculpture-of-layers-of-news-photo/918590464?adppopup=true">GettyImages</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://arts.mit.edu/people/janet-echelman/">Janet Echelman</a> says she never set out to be a sculptor of wind. But if you have ever explored <a href="https://www.echelman.com/project/she-changes">Porto, Portugal</a>, walked the streets of <a href="https://www.echelman.com/earthtime-korea">Gwanggyo, South Korea</a>, or passed through <a href="https://www.echelman.com/project/west-hollywood">West Hollywood</a>, you might have seen her massive iridescent sculptures of fiber floating above cities and the millions of people in them. Working closely with engineers, Echelman has spent the past 26 years of her career producing sculptures that rival the size of skyscrapers.</em> </p>
<p><em>In March, Echelman spoke at the 2023 <a href="https://www.imaginesolutionsconference.com/">Imagine Solutions Conference</a> in Naples, Florida, about her journey to becoming a sculptor, her creative process and how her sculptures have forever changed the landscapes of the cities where they ripple, dance and billow in the wind.</em></p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5xOqVMKLbQg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Janet Echelman speaks at the 2023 Imagine Solutions Conference.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>What inspired you to create this type of art?</strong></p>
<p>I began my career as a painter. In 1997, I traveled to India as a Fulbright scholar and planned to give exhibitions around the country. I had my paints and brushes shipped to India from the U.S., but they never arrived. As the deadline for the show loomed, I had to come up with something fast. In Mahabalipuram, the Indian fishing village where I was staying, I would watch the fishermen work and reel in their mounds of netting on the beach at the end of each day. One day, it occurred to me that those nets would make excellent material for sculptures. By the end of my Fulbright year, I had created an entire series of these netted sculptures with the fishermen, called <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bcf71640cf57d7e684e11bd/t/5c1966b78985836efb599fe2/1545168569303/Bellbottoms.pdf">the Bellbottom Series</a>, named after the popular bell-bottom pants. </p>
<p>I’ve been working to develop and refine this visual language ever since. It’s an ever-evolving challenge to go from making handmade nets on the beach with fishermen in India to creating works the scale of one or two city blocks attached to skyscrapers.</p>
<p><strong>How do you approach the engineering side of your art? How are these pieces constructed, especially given their large scale?</strong></p>
<p>Every piece is planned out digitally first. The first sketches are very simple – it’s just me with a pencil. </p>
<p>But the final design in our studio is a complete digital color 3D model. We can see how the sculpture sits in space and how it attaches to everything around it. We’re able to move around the three-dimensional site to see the work from all sides. </p>
<p>My team and I have engaged in a decade of development of original computer software to do soft-body modeling of our sculptures, which allows us to design our 3D netted forms while understanding the constraints of our craft, showing response to the forces of gravity and wind.</p>
<p>Every element – every line of twine, and every knot – is modeled in terms of its thickness, stiffness, weight and density. So it’s actually quite an endeavor to analyze such unusual structures that are both porous and fluidly moving. This is not the standard – building departments typically analyze solid buildings made of things they know, like steel and concrete – so this is really pushing everyone to work in new ways.</p>
<p>In terms of the physical construction, my sculptures appear delicate yet are incredibly strong. They have to be able to withstand winds of a Category 5 hurricane. We achieve that by using highly engineered materials, including a fiber that NASA used for the Mars Rover called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/ultra-high-molecular-weight-polyethylene">ultrahigh-molecular-weight polyethylene</a>, which is custom-braided into structural ropes. We use a variety of other fibers to create the braided twine for the soft layers of each sculpture. </p>
<p>The ropes are then all hand-spliced together with methods that have been used for hundreds of years to construct boats in the maritime industry. These are old human technologies passed down from generation to generation. </p>
<p>Once we have these knotted net panels, we incorporate different colors to create patterns within the work. These panels are then attached to rope structures and usually lifted into space using cranes. My team pulls them into tension so that they can withstand immense forces of nature. </p>
<p><strong>What was the hardest sculpture to create from a technical standpoint, and why?</strong></p>
<p>My commission for the <a href="https://www.echelman.com/st-petersburg-fl">St. Petersburg pier</a> in Florida titled “Bending Arc” was challenging, because it needed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane – and yet we did it. There’s <a href="https://www.wtsp.com/video/news/local/bending-arc-at-st-pete-pier-dazzles-viewers-as-hurricane-ian-moves-through-florida/67-3583713f-164d-46e2-909e-60ccf0c3132d">footage of it during Hurricane Ian</a>, and it was just dancing beautifully. </p>
<p>Hurricane testing starts in the design stages. Our detailed digital models are tested and analyzed for their capacity to withstand certain forces of wind, which, for public safety reasons, is required in order to obtain a building permit. My sculptures have to satisfy the same requirements as a skyscraper, and they can withstand the same forces as any major building. </p>
<p><strong>What are you currently working on that you’re excited about?</strong></p>
<p>I am excited to continue to explore the relationship between dance and art. In 2014, <a href="https://www.echelman.com/project/dance-collaboration-stuttgart-germany-2014">I collaborated with the Stuttgart Ballet in Germany</a> to create sculptures that dancers could interact with in their performances. </p>
<p>Since then I have worked with a choreographer and engineer at Princeton University to create a sculpture that the dancers actually enter into and interact with. Their movements cause the sculpture to move and appear as if it were a dancer itself at a larger scale. I see it as an exploration of our planet and its climate. It illustrates how the Earth and human beings are always mutually influencing one another – and yet we are not equals. </p>
<p><strong>What do you hope your art evokes in people?</strong></p>
<p>It’s important to me that each person can create their own meaning from art. They are the expert in their own experience. </p>
<p>If my work offers a moment of contemplation and allows you to feel a sense of calm and your own interconnection with the wind, sun, people and city, then that’s all I could hope for. I like how complete strangers often start talking to each other underneath the sculptures. Our cities are made up of straight lines and hard edges and my sculptures offer something completely different – they are soft and adaptable, yet they’re the same scale as skyscrapers. </p>
<p>If my art prompts people to contemplate that the world can be built in a completely different way than it always has been, if it opens up questions, then that is the most an artist could ever hope to do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202476/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Echelman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Artist Janet Echelman explains how she collaborates with engineers to create massive sculptures that have changed city landscapes and inspired people around the world.
Janet Echelman, Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206049
2023-05-25T12:26:20Z
2023-05-25T12:26:20Z
What is vernacular art? A visual artist explains
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527842/original/file-20230523-29-vkachs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C22%2C4883%2C3231&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Henry Darger worked as a hospital custodian. After his death in 1973, hundreds of his illustrations were discovered.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/amberjol/26616919145">Brooklyn Taxidermy/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/the-error-of-margins-vernacular-artists-and-the-mainstream-art-world-5067/">Vernacular art</a> is a genre of visual art made by artists who are usually self-taught. They tend to work outside of art academies and commercial galleries, which have traditionally been the purview of white, affluent artists and collectors.</p>
<p>In the U.S., vernacular art – which can also be called folk art or outsider art – is dominated by the works of African American, Appalachian and working-class people. In many cases these artists took up making paintings, sculptures, quilts or textiles outside of a day job, or later in life. </p>
<p>In early 2023, Christie’s held an <a href="https://www.christies.com/en/auction/outsider-and-vernacular-art-29693/overview">auction of outsider and vernacular art</a>. Featuring work by American artists such as <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/28600">Henry Darger</a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/08/the-utterly-original-bill-traylor">Bill Traylor</a>, <a href="https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/artist/thornton-dial">Thornton Dial</a>, <a href="https://high.org/exhibition/really-free-the-radical-art-of-nellie-mae-rowe/">Nellie Mae Rowe</a>, <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/artist/minnie-evans-1466">Minnie Evans</a> and <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/26683">Joseph Yoakum</a>, the sale grossed more than US$2 million.</p>
<p>Awareness and recognition of this genre has grown over the past few decades, with the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore; Atlanta’s High Museum; and the Milwaukee Art Museum building significant collections.</p>
<h2>Art history as artist history</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Colorful drawing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=808&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528039/original/file-20230524-7504-jrqr6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1016&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Adolf Wölfli’s ‘General view of the island Neveranger’ (1911).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Adolf_W%C3%B6lfli_General_view_of_the_island_Neveranger%2C_1911.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1940s, the French artist Jean Dubuffet came up with the term “<a href="https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/definition-of-art-brut/">art brut</a>,” which translates as “raw art,” to describe art made by mental patients, prisoners or children. The drawings of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adolf-Wolfli">Adolf Wölfli</a>, who died in 1930, inspired Dubuffet’s term.</p>
<p>Wölfli was a patient with schizophrenia in a mental hospital in Bern, Switzerland, who was given pencils and paper as a form of therapy. Working mostly in pencil, Wölfli created elaborate drawings with decorative borders that included symbols, letters and his own system of musical notation.</p>
<p>In an effort to promote this genre, in 1972 the British art historian Roger Cardinal advanced the term “<a href="https://mediumisticart.com/publications/outsider-art/">outsider art</a>” to expand the canon and include more artists, such as <a href="https://madgegill.com/">Madge Gill</a>, who died in 1961. Gill, a British self-taught artist who spent much of her childhood in an orphanage, started making highly patterned drawings at the age of 38, claiming to compose the works while communicating with spirits.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Drawing featuring faces and patterns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527802/original/file-20230523-17-a6sb7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A detail from Madge Gill’s ‘The Transformation.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gogginsworld/48537908822">Goggins World/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his 2004 book “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo3621838.html">Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art and Culture of Authenticity</a>,” sociologist Gary Allen Fine explains that a common facet of vernacular art is an emphasis on the artist’s biography: their personal, family and employment history. Fine observed that to collectors and dealers, these stories seemed to imbue the art with more meaning – and value. <a href="https://arttable.org/cubeportfolio/brooke-davis-anderson/">Some curators</a> have argued that vernacular art should be included in exhibitions of contemporary art and not merely exist in its own siloed category.</p>
<p>But the relationship between vernacular artists and their promoters can be complicated.</p>
<p>In her 1998 book “<a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&u=googlescholar&id=GALE%7CA61185779&v=2.1&it=r&sid=googleScholar&asid=da1ead40">The Temptation: Edgar Tolson and the Genesis of Twentieth-Century Folk Art</a>,” sociologist Julia Ardery explored the ways that <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edgar-tolson-4834">Tolson</a>, a self-taught woodcarver from rural Kentucky, interacted with faculty and students from the University of Kentucky, and she analyzed their influence on his art.</p>
<p>Much of Tolson’s work was acquired by Michael Hall, who taught at the University of Kentucky at the time. Hall helped Tolson receive a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3675514">National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 1981</a>, but he also ended up selling a portion of his collection to the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1989 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/26/arts/arts-artifacts-folk-art-with-an-eye-toward-the-modern.html">for $1.5 million</a>. </p>
<p>As the sale of Tolson’s work shows, when huge sums of money enter the picture, the line between appreciation and exploitation gets blurred.</p>
<h2>Why vernacular art matters</h2>
<p>Vernacular art extends the artistic canon in the same way that folk music reflects broader traditions of expression. It reminds everyone that art is a universal human pursuit.</p>
<p>As the late Chris Strachwitz, the founder of <a href="https://folkways.si.edu/arhoolie">Arhoulie Records</a>, has pointed out, Black traditions of blues and roots music were not formally taught but were passed down from one generation to the next in local communities.</p>
<p>Similarly, the architect <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/obituaries/robert-venturi-dead.html">Robert Venturi</a> promoted vernacular architecture in his 1972 book “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_from_Las_Vegas">Learning from Las Vegas</a>.” In it, he highlighted the ways that Las Vegas casinos and hotels were designed to accommodate the automobile and were meant to be seen as symbols, with massive, outlandish signs – an approach that most schools of architecture would have scoffed at. In doing so, Venturi ushered in <a href="https://blogs.ethz.ch/prespecific/2013/09/18/venturi-learning-from-las-vegas/">more playful forms</a> of architecture.</p>
<p><a href="https://volweb.utk.edu/%7Eblyons/spelvinissues.htm">Concepts of authenticity</a> are central to the appeal of vernacular art. Fine art and culture can sometimes be esoteric and exclusionary, and in a time when artificial intelligence has put authorship in question, vernacular art has even more resonance. It is made by the artists’ hands, using common materials, in ways that reflect their own unique life and artistic visions. </p>
<p>This work represents a pre-digital form of expression, accessible to anyone, that showcases what it means to be resourceful, creative and human.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qpYGAeenvy0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nellie Mae Rowe wasn’t able to pursue her artistic ambitions until she was in her late 60s.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I once created a traveling exhibition of fictive folk art as a parody of the genre. </span></em></p>
The genre – also known as ‘folk art’ or ‘outsider art’ – serves as a reminder that art is a universal human pursuit.
Beauvais Lyons, Chancellor’s Professor of Art, University of Tennessee
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/203446
2023-05-04T11:54:43Z
2023-05-04T11:54:43Z
How Yorkshire influenced the sculptures of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore
<p>When Barbara Hepworth died in 1975, fellow sculptor Henry Moore wrote an obituary in The Sunday Times with the headline, <a href="https://sourcenationalgallery.ie/collection/calm-r20665">The Shaping of a Sculptor</a>. Not only did it prominently feature their shared birthplace of Yorkshire, but the paper’s clever headline echoed the ways their respective artistic identities had been moulded by their early lives.</p>
<p>Almost half a century on, Yorkshire is home to two organisations that represent their legacies – the <a href="https://henry-moore.org/henry-moore-institute/">Henry Moore Institute</a> in Leeds and <a href="https://hepworthwakefield.org">The Hepworth Wakefield</a>. A recently opened exhibition in Wakefield, <a href="https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/magic-in-this-country-hepworth-moore-and-the-land/">Magic in this Country: Hepworth, Moore and the Land</a>, celebrates the connection between the two artists and Yorkshire. </p>
<p>The highly abstracted forms Moore and Hepworth favoured – while never fully abandoning association with the human body in Moore’s case, or becoming completely geometric in Hepworth’s – were based on ideas of a common object language that could speak across cultures.</p>
<p>In discarding its conventional representational purpose, Hepworth and Moore produced a type of sculpture that was, as art critic Rosalind Krauss put it: “<a href="https://monoskop.org/images/b/bf/Krauss_Rosalind_1979_Sculpture_in_the_Expanded_Field.pdf">functionally placeless and largely self-referential</a>”.</p>
<p>As if to demonstrate this, the Henry Moore Foundation manages an <a href="https://henry-moore.org/henry-moore-works-in-public/">interactive webpage</a> charting the locations of his sculptures in public places worldwide. </p>
<p>They can be found in their hundreds spread across five continents. Very few, if any, were made for a specific site or for any commemorative purpose. What is their connection to Yorkshire, then?</p>
<h2>The shape of Yorkshire</h2>
<p>Answering this question requires a more specific look at the kinds of comments both Hepworth and Moore made about their early lives in Yorkshire and how their youth informed their art.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A dramatic green valley covered in rocks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520219/original/file-20230411-26-o6l3tk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/520219/original/file-20230411-26-o6l3tk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520219/original/file-20230411-26-o6l3tk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520219/original/file-20230411-26-o6l3tk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520219/original/file-20230411-26-o6l3tk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520219/original/file-20230411-26-o6l3tk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/520219/original/file-20230411-26-o6l3tk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Limestone Valley in the Yorkshire Dales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/o6P-Jx4BI94">James Maxfield/Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When both artists were interviewed by American filmmaker Warren Forma in the 1960s, they each referred specifically to the juxtaposition of industrial and rural environments in West Yorkshire.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/5britishsculptor0000form/mode/2up">Hepworth noted</a> the “industrial devastation” in and around Wakefield, “where everything was so dark and so black”. She contrasted it with visits to the Dales which were: “So magnificently shaped that the roads became … contours over a sculpture.”</p>
<p>For his part, <a href="https://archive.org/details/5britishsculptor0000form/mode/2up">Moore reminisced</a> about: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A huge natural outcrop of stone at a place near Leeds which as a young boy impressed me tremendously – it had a powerful stone, something like Stonehenge has – and also the slag heaps of the Yorkshire mining villages. The slag heaps which for me as a boy, as a young child, were like mountains.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two works by contemporary artists in Magic in This Country help visitors to see beyond a romanticised view of Yorkshire. Their work speaks to the violent exploitation of the environment and the impact of human activity that Hepworth and Moore saw in their youths and used as a reference point in their art. </p>
<p>Hepworth’s reflections on Yorkshire are crucial to artist Ro Robertson’s work, <a href="https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/hepworth-wakefield-live/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/27192313/Rosanne-Robertson-Terrain-of-the-Queer-Body5.pdf">Between Two Bodies</a> (2020). </p>
<p>The piece was created by casting in the cracks created by water erosion in rock formations in Cornwall and Yorkshire. The work explores oppositions between solidity and void, hardness and softness, animal and mineral. </p>
<p>Emii Alrai’s A Core of Scar (2022), meanwhile, takes historic images of Yorkshire as a starting point, particularly representations of Gordale Scar in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The complex associations the sculpture creates with archaeological artefacts serve as a reminder of how a sculpture’s materials are often the result of digging into the earth and extracting materials from it.</p>
<p>Long before coal mining, locations that are now seen as beauty spots in West Yorkshire <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=GTiIAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP6&dq=limestone+industries+dales&ots=zKPNXb0cLC&sig=lISKlr6sdDxqCo11chkwEdQSHvA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=limestone%20industries%20dales&f=false">were exploited</a> for construction materials in huge quantities, such as the mortar and plaster produced by the burning of limestone.</p>
<p>Thinking about what connects Hepworth and Moore’s sculptures to Yorkshire helps to understand the complex relationship between sculpture and the environment. Sculpture is an art form that depends on the use of natural resources, but through it, nature can be rendered and explored. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://hepworthwakefield.org/whats-on/magic-in-this-country-hepworth-moore-and-the-land/">Magic in this Country: Hepworth, Moore and the Land</a> is at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203446/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael White is a co-convener of the AHRC-funded Hepworth Research Network, working with The Hepworth Wakefield and the University of Huddersfield to bring together art historians, artists, conservators and critics to further knowledge of Hepworth's sculpture and its legacy. </span></em></p>
Growing up in Yorkshire gave Hepworth and Moore outsider viewpoints on the art world.
Michael White, Professor in History of Art, University of York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187970
2023-02-14T13:26:35Z
2023-02-14T13:26:35Z
My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509865/original/file-20230213-409-u60wff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C15%2C3424%2C2281&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pam Longobardi amid a giant heap of fishing gear that she and volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund collected in 2008.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Rothstein</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold and to mitigate their ability to harm. Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning. </p>
<p><a href="https://artdesign.gsu.edu/profile/pamela-longobardi/">My work</a> collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii. At the edge of a black lava beach pounded by surf, I encountered multitudes upon multitudes of plastic objects that the angry ocean was vomiting onto the rocky shore. </p>
<p>I could see that somehow, impossibly, humans had permeated the ocean with plastic waste. Its alien presence was so enormous that it had reached this most isolated point of land in the immense Pacific Ocean. I felt I was witness to an unspeakable crime against nature, and needed to document it and bring back evidence. </p>
<p>I began cleaning the beach, hauling away weathered and misshapen plastic debris – known and unknown objects, hidden parts of a world of things I had never seen before, and enormous whalelike colored entanglements of nets and ropes. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three large plastic art installations, the central one a cornucopia spilling plastic objects onto the floor." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509862/original/file-20230213-409-crkctu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Bounty Pilfered’ (center), ‘Newer Laocoön’ (left) and ‘Threnody’ (right). All made of ocean plastic from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, installed at the Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pam Longobardi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I returned to that site again and again, gathering material evidence to study its volume and how it had been deposited, trying to understand the immensity it represented. In 2006, I formed the <a href="https://driftersproject.net/about/">Drifters Project</a>, a collaborative global entity to highlight these vagrant, translocational plastics and recruit others to investigate and mitigate ocean plastics’ impact. </p>
<p>My new book, “<a href="https://falllinepress.com/products/ocean-gleaning">Ocean Gleaning</a>,” tracks 17 years of my <a href="http://driftersproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2021-CV_-LONGOBARDI-Pam-.pdf">art and research</a> around the world through the Drifters Project. It reveals specimens of striking artifacts harvested from the sea – objects that once were utilitarian, but have been changed by their oceanic voyages and come back as messages from the ocean.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Array of plastic objects, including toys, action figures and fragments of larger objects." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=712&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509512/original/file-20230210-28-ib15eh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=894&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Drifters Objects,’ a tiny sample of the plastic artifacts Pam Longobardi has collected from beaches worldwide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pam Longobardi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Living in a plastic age</h2>
<p>I grew up in what some now deem <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/are-we-living-plastic-age-180957817/">the age of plastic</a>. Though it’s not the only modern material invention, plastic has had the most unforeseen consequences. </p>
<p>My father was a biochemist at the chemical company <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1977/01/02/archives/the-men-from-glad.html">Union Carbide</a> when I was a child in New Jersey. He played golf with an actor who portrayed “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYkm7ts62VM">The Man from Glad</a>,” a Get Smart-styled agent who rescued flustered housewives in TV commercials from inferior brands of plastic wrap that snarled and tangled. My father brought home souvenir pins of Union Carbide’s hexagonal logo, based on the carbon molecule, and figurine pencil holders of “<a href="https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/vintage-union-carbide-dow-chemical-mascot-promo-figurine-tergie-statue--351773420877171292/">TERGIE</a>,” the company’s blobby turquoise mascot. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cr5m8b28eqA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">On the 2013 Gyre Expedition, Pam Longobardi traveled with a team of scientists, artists and policymakers to investigate and remove tons of oceanic plastic washing out of great gyres, or currents, in the Pacific Ocean, and make art from it.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today I see plastic as a zombie material that haunts the ocean. It is made from petroleum, the decayed and transformed life forms of the past. Drifting at sea, it “lives” again as it gathers a biological slime of algae and protozoa, which become attachment sites for larger organisms. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-oceans-are-full-of-plastic-but-why-do-seabirds-eat-it-68110">seabirds</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/bait-and-switch-anchovies-eat-plastic-because-it-smells-like-prey-81607">fish</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/newly-hatched-florida-sea-turtles-are-consuming-dangerous-quantities-of-floating-plastic-143785">sea turtles</a> mistake this living encrustation for food and eat it, plastic and all, the chemical load <a href="https://theconversation.com/hundreds-of-fish-species-including-many-that-humans-eat-are-consuming-plastic-154634">lives on in their digestive tracts</a>. Their body tissues <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/srep03263">absorb chemicals from the plastic</a>, which remain undigested in their stomachs, often ultimately <a href="https://theconversation.com/bait-and-switch-anchovies-eat-plastic-because-it-smells-like-prey-81607">killing them</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two piles of tiny particles of virtually identical sizes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509514/original/file-20230210-16-7dsqrz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Plastic ‘nurdles’ (left), tiny pellets that serve as raw materials for manufacturing plastic products, and herring roe, or eggs (right). These visually analogous forms exemplify how fish can mistake plastic for food.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pam Longobardi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The forensics of plastic</h2>
<p>I see plastic objects as the cultural archaeology of our time – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojZhoPvhraw">relics of global late-capitalist consumer society</a> that mirror our desires, wishes, hubris and ingenuity. They become transformed as they leave the quotidian world and collide with nature. By regurgitating them ashore or jamming them into sea caves, the ocean is communicating with us through materials of our own making. Some seem eerily familiar; others are totally alien.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two views of a degraded arm from a plastic doll, found on Playa Jaco in Costa Rica." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509539/original/file-20230210-19-9tzuuk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A degraded plastic doll arm, from the series ‘Evidence of Crimes.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pam Longobardi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A person engaging in ocean gleaning acts as a detective and a beacon, hunting for the forensics of this crime against the natural world and shining the light of interrogation on it. By searching for ocean plastic in a state of open receptiveness, a gleaner like me can find symbols of pop culture, religion, war, humor, irony and sorrow. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A rolling landscape covered with thousands of life vests." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509540/original/file-20230210-20-jweta0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Division Line,’ 2016. This photograph shows the ‘life-jacket cemetery’ in Lesvos, Greece. Traumatized asylum-seekers and migrants arriving by boat from Türkey leave the life vests on shore as they stagger inland. Most of the waste is plastic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Pam Longobardi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In keeping with the drifting journeys of these material artifacts, I prefer using them in a transitive form as installations. All of these works can be dismantled and reconfigured, although plastic materials are nearly impossible to recycle. I display some objects as specimens on steel pins, and wire others together to form large-scale sculptures. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A plastic bottle cap inscribed 'Endless' and a photograph of a beach littered with plastic objects." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509543/original/file-20230210-22-89toay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From the series ‘Prophetic Objects,’ a plastic cap from a Greek manufacturer of cleaning products, found on the Greek island of Kefalonia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pam Longobardi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I am interested in ocean plastic in particular because of what it reveals about us as humans in a global culture, and about the ocean as a cultural space and a giant dynamic engine of life and change. Because ocean plastic visibly shows nature’s attempts to reabsorb and regurgitate it, it has profound stories to tell.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large sculpted anchor in the center of an art gallery, with ties to life preservers mounted on the ceiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509544/original/file-20230210-25-ixc2yr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Albatross’ and ‘Hope Floats,’ 2017. Recovered ocean plastic, survival rescue blankets, life vest straps and steel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pam Longobardi</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I believe humankind is at a crossroads with regards to the future. The ocean is asking us to pay attention. Paying attention is an act of giving, and in the case of plastic pollution, it is also an act of taking – taking plastic out of your daily life; taking plastic out of the environment; and taking, and spreading, the message that the ocean is laying out before our eyes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pam Longobardi has received funding from Georgia State University, the Hudgens Prize, the Ionion Center for Art and Culture in Kefalonia, Greece, the Oceanic Society, and the Georgia chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. She is a member of the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Oceanic Society.</span></em></p>
Pam Longobardi collects and documents ocean plastic waste and transforms it into public art and photography. Her work makes statements about consumption, globalism and conservation.
Pam Longobardi, Regents' Professor of Art and Design, Georgia State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/193218
2022-11-09T02:42:23Z
2022-11-09T02:42:23Z
This new ‘risky’ playground is a work of art – and a place for kids to escape their mollycoddling parents
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493846/original/file-20221107-15-hw0mzq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4019%2C3017&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hewson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine this: a heap of colourful plastic buckets stacked on top of each other to form a climbable bridge, monolithic bluestone boulders holding up a contorted slide, a pile of concrete demolition debris moonlighting as a resting spot. </p>
<p>At every point, children can be seen swinging their bodies from warped, dented monkey bars and balancing along rope-webs strung between stones.</p>
<p>Would you let your kids come here and play? </p>
<p>This new playground in Melbourne’s Southbank is the work of artist Mike Hewson. The project can be confusing for the public. Is it a playground? A sculpture? Or an unfinished piece of infrastructure?</p>
<p>Hewson’s playable public art parks in Sydney and Melbourne are known to be “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-07/risk-play-playground-city-of-melbourne-not-dangerous-safe/101622592">risky</a>” – but risk means different things to different people. And it’s exactly the risks his art takes that makes it so valuable.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1589357985792667648"}"></div></p>
<h2>The risk of no risk</h2>
<p>Urban play has long been synonymous with the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32893804_The_Ludic_city_Exploring_the_potential_of_public_spaces">cultural life of art and the city</a>. In the decades of Europe’s baby boom, new playground concepts emerged with a focus on “free play” (distinct from earlier playgrounds resembling <a href="https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/dangerous-playgrounds-1900s/">open-air gymnasiums</a>), as one of children’s fundamental needs.</p>
<p>“Tufsen”, Egon Möller-Nielsen’s unusual sculpture was the first unscripted <a href="https://digitaltmuseum.se/011015020013/konstnaren-egon-moller-nielsens-lekskulptur-tuffsen-med-barn">free play sculpture</a> of its kind, created in 1949, bringing together abstract art and play in a public space. </p>
<p>This new approach generated a boom in playground sculptures.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Kids play on a concrete sculpture." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494286/original/file-20221108-24-gaqspe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=572&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egon Möller-Nielsen’s Tufsen in Stockholm was the first free-play sculpture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sune Sundahl</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the early 1980s, we saw a significant shift in response to questions of risk, hazards and children’s safety, which resulted in <a href="https://celos.ca/wiki/uploads/CityParks/PlaygroundSafetyWhitePaper-Kids-n-Safe-Play-CJD.pdf">fears and threats of litigation</a>. </p>
<p>As play-safety standards were introduced in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, <a href="https://www.transfer-arch.com/playground-project/">innovation</a> in the arena of a playable public realm slowed. As soon as the standards began to be referenced in liability cases, playspace designers began to follow them. </p>
<p>Designs outside the specifications were avoided and playgrounds were standardised into the <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2019/2/21/18229434/risky-playground-design">“boring” versions</a> that still dominate most of our play spaces, where the potential movement of children is scripted: up, across and down.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="This playground seems to be balancing on boulders." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493830/original/file-20221107-17-9gc6d8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The new playground at Melbourne’s Southbank doesn’t look like the playgrounds of your childhood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hewson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over the past 30 years, interpretations of <a href="https://www.standards.org.au/news/new-australian-standard-for-playground-safety">these safety standards</a> continue to regularly confuse the meanings of “risk” and “hazard”.
A risk is something the child is aware of, forcing them to identify, analyse and overcome the challenge; a hazard puts one in danger because a condition for injury exists the user cannot perceive.</p>
<p>Conflating these meanings has resulted in a cultural attitude toward play that is <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1479806/Risk_deficit_disorder">highly risk-averse</a>. </p>
<p>This risk-aversion is in contrast to the mounting research on the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3499858/">benefits of risk</a> for children. </p>
<p>Risk-aversion can have <a href="https://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:50781/">long-term health implications</a> on adolescence and into adulthood, potentially impacting the development of anxiety, depression, obesity and diabetes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="This playground seems to be built of plastic buckets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493834/original/file-20221107-25-tyv924.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hewson is also behind Pockets Park in Leichhardt, Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hewson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, researchers Jonathan Haidt and Pamela Paresky <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/by-mollycoddling-our-children-were-fuelling-mental-illness-in-teenagers">suggest</a> contemporary society “mollycoddles” children. The risk-of-no-risk is a question of resilience – not only physical but also, perhaps more importantly, <a href="https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience">psychological resilience</a>. </p>
<p>Psychological resilience is the capacity for adaptation in the face of tragedy, trauma, adversity, threats or significant stress. Put simply, resilience is the ability to “bounce back” from challenging experiences. </p>
<p>Based on this premise, Hewson’s “risky” sculptural play environments can bolster, fortify and increase psychological resilience among children. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A kid climbs on a brick wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493835/original/file-20221107-25-71diu3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These playgrounds can bolster psychological resilience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hewson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In contrast to the conventional playground where movement is predetermined, Hewson’s projects offer children the opportunity to explore unfamiliar, unscripted, innovative and playable sculptural worlds. </p>
<p>When given the chance, even very young children <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.25.2.0301">show clear abilities</a> to negotiate unfamiliar spaces, manage risks and determine their own limitations.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/giant-tube-slides-and-broken-legs-why-the-latest-playground-craze-is-a-serious-hazard-181073">Giant tube slides and broken legs: why the latest playground craze is a serious hazard</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Playable sculpture</h2>
<p>Hewson’s sculptural playgrounds don’t just offer the opportunity for children to take risks. Their very construction appears to be risky: all playable parts appear to be improvised, cobbled together with cardboard and chicken wire, balanced just-so or teetering on the verge of collapse.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A girl climbs in a cage on a boulder." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/494310/original/file-20221109-9155-zrdnlv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hewson’s sculptures seem like they’re teetering on the verge of collapse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hewson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet nothing is quite as it appears. With Hewson’s background in engineering, each playable element has been meticulously designed, structurally engineered and thoughtfully integrated into the urban realm. </p>
<p>This illusion of danger gives the works a sense of the uncanny, appealing to art-lovers and children alike. </p>
<p>In the art world, Hewson’s works are <a href="https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4930/unfettered-actions-sportification-playgrounds-and-/">important</a> for their bold and cheeky irreverence of the traditions of public art. </p>
<p>By making these sculptures playable – and seemingly defective – they tip the hierarchy of “art” upside down. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A kid swings on warped monkey bars." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493841/original/file-20221107-3517-uc8m3a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This might look broken – but it’s highly engineered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hewson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australia has a long-standing reputation of presenting “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/public-art-and-social-history-is-the-monument-dead-20141211-122bzf.html">plonk art</a>” in public spaces. Plonk art is a pejorative slang term for the large Modernist artworks intended for government plazas, corporate atriums and open parks designed to be looked at but not touched. </p>
<p>Hewson takes sculpture off its pedestal and integrates it directly into the public domain, while also engaging local communities in the creative development stages of his projects. </p>
<p>For this experimentation, he receives some <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/nsw/trying-to-push-the-conversation-the-inner-west-playground-dividing-parents-20220211-p59vm8.html">backlash</a> from certain sections of the community – but his convictions keep him pushing forward.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Hewson's packed playground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493826/original/file-20221107-25-7m89vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We need to give kids space to take risks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hewson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His works advance the role of public art in creating a more culturally rich, intergenerational public domain while also challenging conventions of the ubiquitous de-risked playground.</p>
<p>So what do you think? Is it time we integrate more playable art opportunities into the public realm?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bringing-art-into-public-spaces-can-improve-the-social-fabric-of-a-city-162991">Bringing art into public spaces can improve the social fabric of a city</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193218/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanné Mestrom receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>
The new playground in Melbourne’s Southbank is the work of artist Mike Hewson – and it’s exactly the ‘risk’ it proposes that makes it so valuable.
Sanné Mestrom, Senior Lecturer, DECRA Fellow, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/175027
2022-09-25T10:00:38Z
2022-09-25T10:00:38Z
How whiteness was invented and fashioned in Britain’s colonial age of expansion
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484124/original/file-20220912-1734-aydvhw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C5709%2C3701&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Remnants of polychrome colouring were scrubbed from recovered ancient Greek sculptures and artists created new all-white marble sculptures seen as continuous with an imagined past. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fashion <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Force-of-Fashion-in-Politics-and-Society-Global-Perspectives-from-Early/Lemire/p/book/9781138274228">is political — today as in the past</a>. As Britain’s Empire dramatically expanded, people of all ranks lived with clothing and everyday objects in startlingly different ways than generations before. </p>
<p>The years between 1660 and 1820 saw the expansion of the British empire and commercial capitalism. The <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/cotton-9781845202996">social politics of Britain’s cotton trade</a> mirrored profound global transformations bound up with technological and industrial revolutions, social modernization, colonialism and slavery. </p>
<p>As history educators and researchers Abdul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn note, the British “<a href="https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/britains-involvement-with-new-world-slavery-and-the-transatlantic-slave-trade">monarchy started the large-scale involvement of the English in the slave trade</a>” after 1660.</p>
<p>Vast <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-British-Cotton-Trade-1660-1815-Vol-2/Lemire/p/book/9781138757943">profits poured in from areas of plantation slavery</a>, particularly from the Caribbean. The mass enslavement of Africans was at the heart of this brutal system, with laws and policing enforcing Black subjugation <a href="https://schoolshistory.org.uk/topics/british-empire/economic-consequences-of-empire/slave-resistance/">in the face of repeated resistance from enslaved</a> people.</p>
<p>Western fashion reflected the racialized politics that infused this period. Indian cottons and European linens <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/global-trade-and-the-transformation-of-consumer-cultures/A7517EB8FB5003114662BA428501AB79">were now traded in ever-rising volumes</a>, feeding the vogue for lighter and potentially whiter textiles, ever more in demand. </p>
<p>My scholarship explores dimensions of whiteness through material histories — how whiteness was fashioned in labour structures, routines, esthetics and everyday practices.</p>
<h2>Whiteness on many scales</h2>
<p>Enslaved men and women were never given white clothes, unless as part of livery (servants’ uniforms, which were sometimes very luxurious). Wearing white textiles became a marker of status in urban centres, in colonizing nations and in colonies. Textile whiteness was a transient state demanding constant renewal, shaping ecologies of style. The resulting Black/white dichotomy hardened as profits from enslavement soared, with a striking impact on culture. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Women seen doing washing over tubs in the street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484349/original/file-20220913-5073-27h28p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484349/original/file-20220913-5073-27h28p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484349/original/file-20220913-5073-27h28p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484349/original/file-20220913-5073-27h28p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484349/original/file-20220913-5073-27h28p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484349/original/file-20220913-5073-27h28p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484349/original/file-20220913-5073-27h28p.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=569&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scenes of women washing were a staple of European artists. A bleaching wash, using ash-based lye, was routine as washerwomen strained to achieve whiteness. Undated picture by British artist Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Yale Center for British Art/Paul Mellon Collection)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Whiteness in clothing, decor and fashion was amplified, becoming a marker of status. Elaborate washing techniques were used to achieve material goals. </p>
<p>British sociologist Vron Ware emphasizes “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822381044-009">the importance of thinking about whiteness on many different scales</a>,” including “as an interconnected global system, having different inflections and implications depending on where and when it has been produced.” Accordingly, fabrics, laundry and fashion were entangled in imperial aims. </p>
<h2>Pristine whiteness in garments</h2>
<p>Laundering was codified in household manuals from the late 1660s, a chore overseen by housewives and housekeepers. Women with fewer options sweated over washtubs, engaged in ubiquitous labour with the aim of pristine whiteness. </p>
<p>In colonial and plantation regions, where lightweight fabrics were key, Black enslaved women were tasked with this never-ending drudgery. Only a few profited personally from their fashioning skills.</p>
<p>This workforce was vast. Yet few museums have invited visitors to consider the processes of soaking, bleaching, washing, blueing, starching and ironing required by historic garments. </p>
<p>A recent exhibit at <a href="https://agnes.queensu.ca/connect/about-agnes/#about-agnes">Agnes Etherington Art Centre</a> at Queen’s University <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bDY3oy0tbA">curated by Jason Cyrus, a researcher who analyzes fashion and textile history</a>, examined <a href="https://agnes.queensu.ca/digital-agnes/video/black-bodies-white-gold-unpacking-slavery-and-north-american-cotton-production">slavery and North American cotton production</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5hh3nHzTy2M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Black Bodies, White Gold: Unpacking slavery and North American cotton production,’ video from Agnes Etherington Art Centre about Black life at the core of the Victorian cotton industry.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Laundry labour of enslaved women</h2>
<p>The skilled labour of enslaved women was a core component of every plantation and an essential colonial urban trade, given the resident population and many thousands of seafarers and sojourners arriving annually in the Caribbean — all wanting clothes refreshed. </p>
<p>Ports throughout the Atlantic were stocked with wash tubs and women labouring over them. Orderly material whiteness was the aim. Mary Prince recorded her thoughts about a demanding mistress in Antigua, who gave the enslaved Prince weekly “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469633299_prince">two bundles of clothes, as much as a boy could help me lift; but I could give no satisfaction</a>.”</p>
<p>Prince only earned money laundering for ships’ captains during her “owners’” absence. Within port cities, including the Caribbean and imperial centres, this trade allowed some enslaved women mobility and sometimes self-emancipation. But fashioning whiteness was a fraught process, with many historical threads. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-am-not-your-nice-mammy-how-racist-stereotypes-still-impact-women-111028">I am not your nice 'Mammy': How racist stereotypes still impact women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Colour scrubbed from recovered statues</h2>
<p>From the 1750s, European fashion and artistic style was increasingly inspired by perceptions of the classical past. Countless portraits were painted of wealthy people as Greek gods, the classical past becoming, as cultural theorist Stuart Hall observed, a “myth reservoir.” These became sources <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478021223-023">for imagining Europe’s origins</a> and destiny.</p>
<p>European scholars and the educated public viewed this cultural lineage as white. <a href="https://www.rom.on.ca/en/exhibitions-galleries/exhibitions/kore-670">Remnants of polychrome colouring was scrubbed</a> from recovered <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/see-the-vibrant-long-overlooked-colors-of-classical-sculptures-180980321/">Greek sculptures</a>.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Vox’ video about the white lie we’ve been told about Roman statues.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This supposed heritage of a white classical past defined <a href="https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-neoclassicism/">what became known as neoclassical</a> styles further expanding the craze for light, white gowns, a political fashion needing endless care. </p>
<p>In this era, “the term classical was not neutral,” as art historian Charmaine Nelson explains, “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42631206">but a racialized term</a> …” Nelson states that the category “classical” also defined the marginalization of Blackness as its antithesis.</p>
<p>Today, some scholars are wrestling <a href="https://www.famsf.org/about/publications/gods-color-polychromy-ancient-world">with the legacy of racism built into classical studies</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/handels-messiah-today-how-classical-music-is-contending-with-its-colonial-past-and-present-173218">Handel's 'Messiah' today: How classical music is contending with its colonial past and present</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Racialized masquerade</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman seen draped in white garments against a dramatic dark background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1229&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1229&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484122/original/file-20220912-14-xqn9g5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1229&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">European scholars and the educated public viewed the ancient Greek and Roman past through their contemporary imperial politics, which included embedded racism. Portrait of Elizabeth, Viscountess Bulkeley, as the Greek goddess, Hebe, by George Romney, 1775.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Neoclassical gowns reflected this zeitgeist, as ladies disported themselves as Greek goddesses. Ladies’ magazines urged readers to play-act as deities. Simple socializing en vogue would not suffice. Fashion required a wider stage. </p>
<p>Masquerade balls became the venue where whiteness and empire aligned, as goddesses robed in white mingled with guests in blackface or regalia appropriated from colonized peoples. </p>
<p>Masquerades became staple occasions, revels led by royals, nobles and those enriched through trade and slave labour. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-blackface-97987">The problem with blackface</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Race hierarchies enforced</h2>
<p>Seemingly banal routines (and stylish affairs) reveal cultural facets of empire where race hierarchies were reinforced. In this era, everyday dress and celebratory fashions demanded relentless attention. </p>
<p>These routines were enmeshed with empire and race, whether in the colonial Caribbean or a London grand masquerade. </p>
<p>The proliferation of white linens and cottons were purposefully employed to enforce hierarchies. The rise of white clothing and neoclassical style can be better understood by addressing mass enslavement as an economic, political and cultural force shaping styles, determining vogues and promoting the fashions of whiteness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175027/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beverly Lemire receives funding from organization: SSHRC, the University of Alberta, the Killam Foundation - in the form of a Killam Research Fellowship</span></em></p>
Western fashion, laundering and style reflected the racialized politics dramatically shaped by profound global transformations bound up with slavery, colonialism and modernization.
Beverly Lemire, Professor, Department of History, Classics and Religion, University of Alberta
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/189508
2022-08-30T15:06:03Z
2022-08-30T15:06:03Z
Glasgow’s relaunched Burrell Collection may be unique and much-loved, but how does it fit into the cultural landscape today?
<p>After closing for extensive renovations in 2016, the <a href="https://burrellcollection.com/">Burrell museum</a>, home to one of the greatest personal art collections ever bequeathed to the public, reopened in March 2022. Now, as its first major exhibition opens, it’s hard to avoid the fact that in those six years the political and cultural landscape in Britain has radically changed.</p>
<p>There is much greater focus on issues of provenance, gender and ethnicity, especially in the context of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-africa-to-peckham-how-we-decolonise-culture-by-rehumanising-people-126860">decolonising public spaces</a> – which is basically about ridding these places of the inherent racism that is a direct result of Britain’s imperial endeavours.</p>
<p>The new exhibition looks in detail at the lives of its benefactors, <a href="https://burrellcollection.com/the-collection-the-gift-to-glasgow-and-the-charity-that-cares-for-it/">Sir William and Lady Constance Burrell</a>, through the curation of more than 100 pieces taken from their collection. The Burrells’ Legacy: A Great Gift to Glasgow (which runs till April 16 2023), contains rarely seen works of art including two entirely new additions, a beautifully rendered painting called The Mallard Rising (see main image above) by Joseph Crawhall, and an exquisite bronze sculpture called l'Implorante by little-known French sculptor Camille Claudel (see final image below). </p>
<p>Burrell, the Glasgow-born shipping magnate was one of the UK’s most prolific philanthropists who gifted his collection of 6,000 works of art to his home city in 1944. He continued to develop his collection, aiming for it to be more globally representative, and amassed a total of 9,000 works spanning three continents and 6,000 years, before his death in 1958. </p>
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<h2>Art and empire</h2>
<p>His business success was founded at a time when Victorian Glasgow was the workshop of the world and the second city of the British empire. Burrell was one of a class of industrial elites who used their wealth to increase their social prominence by amassing extraordinary collections of art and antiquities.</p>
<p>So how does this much-loved and unique collection sit within the cultural landscape today? Set against a backdrop of the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, historical monuments and collections are facing public scrutiny like never before. Collections are critiqued around their works’ provenance, history and how their acquisition were funded.</p>
<p>It is down to the integrity of Burrell and his knowledge of the world of art and antiquities at that time that there are so few provenance issues associated with his vast collection, although there have been several recent notable exceptions around <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2vu_p4Ty30">artworks appropriated by the Nazis</a>. </p>
<p>But in Glasgow, people are less concerned about issues pertaining to the Burrell Collection’s imperial context than they are about the cost of upgrading it at a time of <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/20028907.glasgows-burrell-collection-reopening-targeted-protesters/">closures and failings</a> in the upkeep on commuity facilities across the city.</p>
<p>Still, this doesn’t avoid the fact that the collection was gathered at the height of the British empire, whose social norms and politics of exploitation sit uneasily with the drive to present alternative cultural perspectives today – meaning the voices of the people and cultures where the art originated. </p>
<p>A supporter of living artists, Burrell was guided by prominent art dealers and academics in developing his knowledge around art and history. He was a Scottish Presbyterian with a deep sense of public service, a trustee of several national institutions and was involved in local politics. </p>
<p>He regularly loaned his artworks to different galleries around the country, wishing to share his developing art collection with others. His artworks were particularly prominent at the <a href="https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/history/remembering-glasgow-international-exhibition-1901-23844710">Glasgow International Exhibition</a> of 1901.</p>
<p>His collection offered those who wished to improve their lives through the appreciation of beauty and craft an opportunity to share in his legacy. Today, many regard the quality of the Burrell Collection as unsurpassed, rivalling major international art museums.</p>
<h2>Cultural legacy</h2>
<p>This new exhibition provides an insight into the life of the Burrells and their collections of beautiful objects and works of art. These include artefacts of ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, Ming Dynasty vases, 19th-century romantic French paintings and delicate Japanese woodcut prints. There is high renaissance stained-glass set against medieval armour, Persian tapestries contrasting delicate lace, and rare pieces of furniture.</p>
<p>The two new acquisitions are stunning: Mallard Rising is a painting by <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/joseph-crawhall">Joseph Crawhall</a>, who was one of the leading <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/glasgow-boys">Glasgow Boys</a> – an influential group of artists who rebelled against stuffy cultural Victorian norms; and the small bronze statue is by <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/artist/claudel-camille/">Camille Claudel</a>, best known as Auguste Rodin’s lover and assistant, but a gifted – if largely unrecognised – sculptor in her own right. </p>
<p>Highlights are the exquisite and intact gilded mummy casing of an Ibis from ancient Egypt; the Chinese Ming Wanli period porcelain jar with five-clawed dragons; Théodore Géricault’s radiant painting The Prancing Grey Horse; the burse for the great Seal of England – a stunning ceremonial bag, embroidered in silk with silver and gilt threads; and finally an old favourite, the dynamic Japanese woodcut print of Shoki the Demon Queller, king of the ghosts.</p>
<p>Ultimately the pieces in this exhibition reflect the preferences, tastes and perspectives of William Burrell and the bias of his era is inherent within this formerly private collection. The broader collection from which these pieces have been chosen holds predominately white, male, Eurocentric, colonial perspectives at its core.</p>
<p>Female works are sparse and mainly comprise lace and embroidery. The exhibition avoids looking at the artworks through any gendered lens and exclusively reflects the taste of Burrell and his wife. The acquisition of the Claudel sculpture by the trust is a gesture towards more inclusivity, but it stands out as an exception rather than the rule.</p>
<p>What does an exhibition like this say about how culture is created? Those in powerful positions shape and influence the nature of art through their purchases and their specific choices around support of the arts. They reinforce their status through being seen as arbiters of good taste and elevate what they think should be valued as art. Art and culture is given to Glaswegians to look at and admire, where perhaps more time could be spent on people making their own culture and art in their own communities.</p>
<p>Even though this collection is of huge historical importance in its own right, it does not give the audience any socio-historical context or try to create a relationship with more modern contemporary types of art. It looks backwards to a time of empire with no attempt to bridge the gap between the world then and the world now. Perhaps the Burrell’s curators will come to consider these broader, modernising themes alongside managing and maintaining such a mammoth collection.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189508/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blane Savage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Gathered throughout the period of the British empire and gifted to the people of Glasgow, this famous collection is both spectacular and problematical.
Blane Savage, Lecturer in Creative Media Practice and New Media Art, University of the West of Scotland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184817
2022-06-10T12:01:34Z
2022-06-10T12:01:34Z
Paula Rego: why the Portuguse artist’s work remains relevant in the fight for abortion rights
<p>The great feminist artist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jun/08/paula-rego-artist-dies-aged-87">Paula Rego</a> has died at the age of 87 after a short illness. An image-maker of enormous talent, her work has been variously described as disturbing, visceral, mysterious and surreal.</p>
<p>Paula Rego was born in Lisbon in 1935, in the years following the formation of the authoritarian <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/soft-fascism">Estado Novo (new state) regime</a>. She lived with her grandmother during much of her childhood, after her parents moved to England for work the year after her birth. She later joined them in her late teens, gaining a place at the <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/">Slade School of Fine Art</a>, where she studied from 1952-1956.</p>
<p>Rego has been a respected artist in both Portugal and the UK for decades, with retrospectives in both of her “home” nations. Like many artists and art historians, I first encountered Rego’s work through the books in the small library of my art classroom. In my teens I was not entirely sure the power of her paintings transferred well at small scale to the slightly glossy pages of these well-thumbed books. But I knew they did have power.</p>
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<p>The women in Rego’s work were different to those passive, ethereal forms we were shown in the works of the old masters. They were a world away from the <a href="https://www.pablopicasso.org/the-weeping-woman.jsp">abstracted shapes of Picasso’s women</a> or the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/degas-and-his-dancers-79455990/">delicacy of Degas’ ballerinas</a>. Rego’s women were grounded, literally and figuratively. They seemed real and tangible – they wouldn’t float away on a clam shell like <a href="https://www.uffizi.it/en/artworks/birth-of-venus">Botticelli’s Venus</a> might.</p>
<p>Perhaps best remembered for her shocking but moving series of <a href="https://womensartblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/the-abortion-pastels-paula-rego/">abortion pastels</a>, Rego’s work remains hugely relevant to the continued fight for abortion rights – particularly in the wake of the recent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54513499">undermining of the Roe v Wade</a> supreme court ruling in the US, which made abortion legal in 1973.</p>
<p>In John McEwan’s 1992 book about her, Rego muses on her primary reasons for painting. She said it was “to give terror a face”, and because she “can’t help it”.</p>
<p>As a teenager I absolutely did not understand the political importance of Rego’s paintings. It infuses her work in any medium, from narrative painting, collage and pastels to drawing and printmaking, grounding each subject in fairytales, nursery rhymes, literary novels, autobiography, bodily autonomy and human rights. </p>
<h2>A woman’s experience</h2>
<p>Rego had abortions, and was an ardent supporter of abortion rights, especially in Portugal where it remained illegal (unless under exceptional circumstances) until 2007. Her abortion works are a visceral and moving reminder of the power of art to reflect and reveal everyday experiences, redefine conversations and repoliticise events that some would prefer to push to the periphery.</p>
<p>The untitled series of pastels on paper (1998-1999) was created in response to Portugal’s 1998 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3513790">referendum on abortion</a>, where the vote for its legalisation was not passed. Author <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1130193.Paula_Rego">Fiona Bradley</a> has called these works “images of revenge against injustice”.</p>
<p>The women in the series are the central focus of these works. Depicted in stark surroundings in a range of poses, some bleeding, others crumpled in pain, they are invariably active subjects in the narrative, not victims. There is no blood or gore, which Rego felt would undermine the power of the images.</p>
<p>Some gaze at the viewer unapologetically, some are engrossed in the process unfolding, but all, as Bradley says, “are doing this, they are not having it done to them: it is their right and their choice”.</p>
<p>These are examples of the face of terror – the reality of what happens when bodily autonomy is stripped away. Importantly, it is not the act or process of abortion itself that is terrifying, it is the state-enforced limiting of access to healthcare. This is captured in Rego’s <a href="https://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/8686/triptych-1998">Triptych</a>, from 1998, which depicts a girl in school uniform to squatting over a bucket as she bleeds.</p>
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<h2>Too much</h2>
<p>Some have criticised Rego’s representation of women as being <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA262882770&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=09611460&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ee0ecd19d">too sexual</a> – or for being the wrong kind of sexual. Many of Rego’s works, including the abortion pastels and the 1994 series <a href="https://www.victoria-miro.com/artworks/29910/">Dog Woman</a>, present images of what we might today call <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/women-apologizing_b_5591779">unapologetic women</a>. </p>
<p>Rego’s women are not apologising for their bodies, their choices or their actions – any of them. They do not apologise for their materiality and viscera. These women may be represented in pastel (a medium perhaps more readily associated with a softer aesthetic) but the images she produced <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30219063">embrace abjection</a> to become, what Bradley describes as “bodily, sexually, thrilling”. </p>
<p>As culture academic Maria Manuel Lisboa asserts, Rego’s “images are rooted in a pre-existing context whose nuances inform the resulting pictures and are central to their meaning”.</p>
<p>The political context of the abortion series is fundamental to its power, but re-reading these works in the light of the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/britains-descent-into-culture-wars-has-been-rapid-but-it-neednt-be-terminal-182885">culture wars</a>” rippling through contemporary culture can only remind us of the vital importance of Rego’s work.</p>
<p>Like Rego, we must remain unapologetic about our right to bodily autonomy and to live free from harassment and violence. We must remain unapologetic about our right to express our sexuality in the face of increasing social conservatism. We must be unafraid, as she was, to give a face to terror.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184817/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bee Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Portuguese artist, who has died at the age of 87, had a strong feminist streak in her work that blazed a trail for women’s rights.
Bee Hughes, Lecturer in Media, Culture, Communication, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/173424
2021-12-16T19:08:40Z
2021-12-16T19:08:40Z
Imperial loot in a small-town gallery in New Zealand? The curious case of Gore’s ‘Benin bronzes’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436470/original/file-20211208-172173-1unnatl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C0%2C5467%2C3655&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Benin bronze sculptures, part of an exhibition in Germany in 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Southland town of Gore is best known for its giant <a href="https://southlandnz.com/gore/scenic-photo-point/gore-brown-trout-statue">statue of a brown trout</a> and the <a href="https://www.goldguitars.co.nz/">Golden Guitars</a> country music festival. But the town’s Eastern Southland Gallery (<a href="https://www.esgallery.co.nz/">ESG</a>) also hosts one of the country’s most remarkable and eclectic art collections – and a connection to one of the art world’s enduring controversies.</p>
<p>Amassed by <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/44360/john-money">John Money</a>, a New Zealand psychologist who lived and worked in the US, the <a href="https://www.esgallery.co.nz/john-money-collection">collection</a> includes works by notable New Zealand artists Rita Angus and Theo Schoon, and the Baltimore artist Lowell Nesbitt. (Rich examples of Ralph Hotere’s works, donated by the artist, supplement the Money collection.)</p>
<p>Schoon’s posthumous reputation is now <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/standing-room-only/audio/2018708189/problematic-controversial-racist-discussing-the-art-of-theo-schoon">mired in controversy</a> for his despoiling of Māori petroglyphs and his use of Indigenous carving techniques.</p>
<p>But it’s the gallery’s examples of <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/news/features/9599167/Show-me-the-money">Benin bronze heads</a> that appear to bring sleepy Gore into the centre of one of the hottest art world debates – the acquisition by force of Indigenous artworks during the colonial period.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436471/original/file-20211208-141178-qgxrph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436471/original/file-20211208-141178-qgxrph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436471/original/file-20211208-141178-qgxrph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436471/original/file-20211208-141178-qgxrph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436471/original/file-20211208-141178-qgxrph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436471/original/file-20211208-141178-qgxrph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436471/original/file-20211208-141178-qgxrph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Zealand-born psychologist John Money (pictured in the 1980s) amassed his art collection in the US.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Imperial plunder</h2>
<p>The Kingdom of Benin, situated in Edo State in modern Nigeria, flourished for six centuries from 1200 CE. Benin City was famous for its massive protective walls and the remarkable artistic practices that flourished behind them. As the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/kingdom-benin/">National Geographic library</a> explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Artists of the Benin Kingdom were well known for working in many materials, particularly brass, wood, and ivory. They were famous for their bas-relief sculptures, particularly plaques, and life-size head sculptures. The plaques typically portrayed historical events, and the heads were often naturalistic and life size. Artisans also carved many different ivory objects, including masks and, for their European trade partners, salt cellars.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/germany-is-returning-nigerias-looted-benin-bronzes-why-its-not-nearly-enough-165349">Germany is returning Nigeria's looted Benin Bronzes: why it's not nearly enough</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Britain was keen to include the kingdom in its sphere of control, and in 1897 took the opportunity of the murder of some European traders to annex the territory and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56292809">sack Benin City</a>. Countless artefacts were seized as punitive compensation, and eventually included in public collections, notably in London and Berlin, but widely around the world.</p>
<p>The Brooklyn Museum, for example, has the <a href="https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/4775">largest collection</a> of African art in the US. It includes a Benin sculpture of a horn blower, thought to have been cast in the 16th century in copper alloy and iron.</p>
<p>The museum does not – and almost certainly cannot – provide the full history of ownership of the sculpture. The bulk of its African collection was bought in 1922 from dealers in Brussels, London and Paris.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436472/original/file-20211208-21-r269lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Benin bronze sculptures on display in the 2021 ‘Where Is Africa’ exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The NZ connection</h2>
<p>This vagueness about provenance is common. Nevertheless, the distinctive skill of the Benin artists was such that their work is easily identifiable. We also know that any Benin bronze in a Western collection is tainted by the possibility it came onto the market as a result of the sacking of Benin City.</p>
<p>New Zealand’s Canterbury Museum has the largest collection of Benin artworks in Australasia. Unlike other collections, the museum’s curators have constructed a clear narrative of the provenance of the artworks. According to the <a href="https://www.canterburymuseum.com/assets/Uploads/Museum-Records-2014-vW2.pdf">museum records</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All but one of the pieces of Benin art were acquired during the directorship of Canterbury Museum by Captain Frederick Wollaston Hutton around the turn of the 20th century.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While Hutton bought the items, they most likely became available to the market as a result of the sacking of Benin City. Ironically, Canterbury Museum’s careful research is likely to facilitate any repatriation claim.</p>
<p>Because of Māori experience of colonial plunder, especially the trade in <a href="https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/about/repatriation/repatriation-maori-and-moriori-remains">mokomokai</a>, people of Aotearoa New Zealand should be particularly attuned to the desire of previously colonised peoples to regain agency over their cultural artefacts.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cultural-appropriation-when-borrowing-becomes-exploitation-57411">Cultural appropriation: when ‘borrowing’ becomes exploitation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Pressure for repatriation</h2>
<p>Perhaps, in an ideal world, Western collections would repatriate all their Benin artworks. They would then be studied and admired in the place they were created, particularly by local people, but also by academics and gallery goers from around the world.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436474/original/file-20211208-159504-e3jumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A snake head sculpture, part of extensive Benin bronze collections held in Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That may not be likely any time soon, but the Canterbury Museum will eventually need to come to terms with growing demand for the return of plundered artworks, even if its items were acquired for value and in good faith from intermediaries under the usual circumstances of the time.</p>
<p>An Edo Museum of West African Art is <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/museum-west-african-art-will-incorporate-pieces-city-destroyed-1897-invasion-180976318/">planned</a> for Benin City, which would house the region’s returned art. Several major Western collections have already agreed to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/major-push-museums-around-world-make-plans-repatriate-benin-bronzes-nigeria-180977519/">repatriate</a> or lend their bronzes and other works. However, the museum has not yet been completed and may never meet <a href="https://culturalpropertynews.org/nigeria-welcomes-future-edo-museum-of-west-african-art-emowaa/">the architect’s vision</a>.</p>
<p>While the local people’s spiritual attachment to their cultural treasures is likely to prevent returned artefacts being simply recycled through the black market, they are unlikely to receive the same level of curatorial care as institutions like Canterbury Museum may provide. As Nigerian essayist <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n16/adewale-maja-pearce/strewn-with-loot">Adewale Maja-Pearce</a> has written:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Kingdom of Benin no longer exists. Its legacy […] is a dismal, sewage-infested ruin in Benin City, over which Obaseki, as state governor, has the last word. The oba [king] has appealed to the federal government of Nigeria to take custody of the artefacts while he makes alternative funding arrangements, despite the fact that no administration during the last 60 years has lifted a finger to protect our cultural heritage.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-identified-39-000-indigenous-australian-objects-in-uk-museums-repatriation-is-one-option-but-takes-time-to-get-right-172302">We identified 39,000 Indigenous Australian objects in UK museums. Repatriation is one option, but takes time to get right</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>So, how does Gore’s ESG fit into this narrative? On closer investigation, all is not quite what it seems. The three display items in the Money collection were created in the Benin tradition but actually date from the 1960s. (Money engaged reputable dealers so that living artists could benefit from his purchases.)</p>
<p>In the penumbral light of the gallery, however, only an expert could tell the difference between ancient and modern artefacts. If the Canterbury Museum joins the international movement towards repatriation of Benin artworks, then, Gore will be the only place in the country where we will be able to appreciate in physical form the extraordinary craft of traditional Benin metalworkers.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The author gratefully acknowledges the advice of Eastern Southland Gallery curator Jim Geddes and PhD candidate Chizo Chukwujama.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173424/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Barrett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Items on display at the Eastern Southland Gallery in New Zealand’s South Island open a window on the complex world of art repatriation.
Jonathan Barrett, Associate Professor in Commercial Law and Taxation, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/171444
2021-11-08T15:09:40Z
2021-11-08T15:09:40Z
Benin bronzes: What is the significance of their repatriation to Nigeria?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430815/original/file-20211108-13-1cbbsnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">GettyImages</span> </figcaption></figure><p>After years of pressure, western countries are finally returning priceless artefacts and artworks that had been looted from Nigeria during colonial times and were on display in foreign museums. </p>
<p>Commonly called the <a href="https://theconversation.com/germany-is-returning-nigerias-looted-benin-bronzes-why-its-not-nearly-enough-165349">Benin Bronzes</a>, because the objects originated from the Kingdom of Benin (today’s Nigeria), these beautiful and technically remarkable artworks have come to symbolise the broader restitution debate.</p>
<p>Two British universities – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/oct/15/cambridge-college-to-be-first-uk-return-looted-benin-bronze">Cambridge</a> University and the University of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-59063449">Aberdeen</a> – recently returned two of the artefacts. And, in mid-October, Germany and Nigeria <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/smithsonian-african-art-benin-bronzes-repatriation/index.html">signed</a> a memorandum of understanding setting out a timetable for the return of around 1,100 sculptures from German museums.</p>
<p>Jos van Beurden – an expert on the protection, theft and smuggling of cultural and historical treasures of vulnerable states – offers his insights into this wave of repatriation. He also suggests a way forward for Nigeria to handle and harness the benefits of the artefacts.</p>
<p><strong>Photo:</strong><br>
Altar to the Hand (Ikegobo), late 18th century, Nigeria, Court of Benin, Edo peoples, Bronze. In the royal kingdom of Benin, cylindrical ‘altars to the hand,’ or ikegobo, are created to celebrate a person’s accomplishments and successes. Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/altar-to-the-hand-late-18th-century-nigeria-court-of-benin-news-photo/1296574449?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a>, <a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/eula#RM">Rights-managed</a> </p>
<p><strong>Music:</strong>
“Happy African Village” by John Bartmann, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Bartmann/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One/happy-african-village">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a>.</p>
<p>“African Moon” by John Bartmann, found on <a href="https://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Bartmann/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One/african-moon">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1.0 Universal License.</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171444/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
After years of pressure, western countries are finally returning the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. What's next?
Joey Akan, Freelance Arts & Culture Editor
Usifo Omozokpea, Audience Development Manager
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165467
2021-10-31T19:05:49Z
2021-10-31T19:05:49Z
Larger than life – sculptor Margel Hinder carved light and form and left a legacy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414758/original/file-20210805-23-19h5scj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C2%2C1925%2C1379&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sculptor Margel Hinder with the model for Interlock in 1973. Photograph: Richard Beck.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heide</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many years ago my daily pleasure was to walk past a Margel Hinder masterpiece, the Civic Park Fountain in Newcastle. With water spraying in rhythmic patterns, it would bring a smile to my face for its beauty, the way the streams caught the light. </p>
<p>Fountains can’t be moved for an exhibition, of course, but Hinder’s Civic Park Fountain and her sadly decommissioned Northpoint Fountain of 1975 have been digitally simulated by <a href="https://www.andrewyip.org/?p=2331">Andrew Yip</a> for <a href="https://www.heide.com.au/exhibitions/margel-hinder-modern-motion">Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion</a>, a joint project of Heide Museum of Modern Art and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.</p>
<p>Throughout the 1960s and 70s Hinder was commissioned to create sculptures for Australia’s public places, including the Reserve Bank in Sydney, Woden Town Square in Canberra and the Telecommunications Building in Adelaide. So her work has hardly been hidden from the public gaze. </p>
<p>But for many years the dominant book on Australian art was Bernard Smith’s <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/6028116">Australian Painting</a>. As a result, artists in other media are less well known than they deserve to be. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?q=Margel+Hinder">Art Gallery of New South Wales</a> began collecting her work in 1949. Nevertheless the range of the sculptures in the current exhibition is still a surprise. With mostly small works, this is sculpture at its most intimate – welcoming the viewer into a world where asymmetrical form rules. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="fountain" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414744/original/file-20210805-13-1rcon6b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sunlight plays with the water in Margel Hinder’s Civic Park fountain in Newcastle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/newcastle-nsw-australia-nov-23-600w-1535343740.jpg">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>American by birth</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/hinder-margel/">Margel Ina Harris</a> was born in New York, brought up in Buffalo, and lived in Boston with a family that encouraged creativity. </p>
<p>In 1929, at the age of 23, she went to a summer school in upstate New York to work with the modernist artist <a href="https://www.emil-bisttram.com">Emil Bisttram</a>. There she met young Australian artist and designer <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hinder-henry-francis-frank-17858">Frank Hinder</a>. They married in 1930 and daughter Enid was born the following year. </p>
<p>In 1933, at the depths of the Great Depression, the Hinders travelled to New Mexico, again to work with Bisstram. Margel took nourishment from the dry sculptural Mesa landscapes of Taos – and observed the rhythms and of the Pueblo women as they went about their daily business. Her approach to form began to change from modelling to carving. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman making large wooden sculpture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414745/original/file-20210805-15-bgyi7n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margel Hinder working on Mother and Child, circa 1939.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heide/AGNSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/joy-hester-a-body-of-work-remembered-at-last-141449">Joy Hester – a body of work, remembered at last</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>On the family’s subsequent slow sea voyage from the US to Sydney, she carved her first wooden relief sculpture, Taos Women. After arriving in Sydney she carved Pueblo Indian, a simplified solid form emerging from the wood.</p>
<p>Sydney’s art establishment was decidedly conservative. Nevertheless the Hinders soon befriended a small group of modernist painters and thinkers including <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/grace-crowley/biography/">Grace Crowley</a>, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/balson-ralph-9416">Ralph Balson</a>, <a href="https://www.daao.org.au/bio/eleonore-henrietta-lange/biography/">Eleonore Lange</a> and <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fizelle-reginald-cecil-grahame-rah-6185">Rah Fizelle</a>. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.penrithregionalgallery.com.au/about-us/our-story/gerald-margo-lewers/">Gerald Lewers</a>, Margel found a fellow sculptor who understood her exploration of wood as form. She later wrote that Gerald Lewers “was the most developed of any sculptors here in Sydney”. </p>
<p>In 1939 she made <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/554.1994/">Mother and Child</a>, a work less about the subject and more about honouring the material from which it is made.</p>
<h2>Light enters</h2>
<p>Her methods changed again during and after the second world war. The Hinders moved to Canberra where Frank worked on camouflage projects for the Department of Home Security and Margel made small wooden models. </p>
<p>After the war they returned to Gordon in Sydney and a house that backed onto the bush. There birds would come to feed in the elaborate sculpture Frank made for them. Margel worked in her studio, surrounded by the light and sounds of the bush. </p>
<p>Her work became more constructive. And a new element entered — light. She sometimes used hand-coloured Perspex to get particular effects. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="modernist sculpture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414747/original/file-20210805-25-c3jd30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=622&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wire and Perspex Abstract, c.1955, Newcastle Art Gallery, New South Wales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heide/AGNSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She shaped and soldered wire to cast shadows. <a href="https://margelhinder.com.au/art/?id=12696">Revolving Random Dots</a> (1953) spins using a swivel mechanism, while movement in other constructions is aided by a carefully placed fan.</p>
<p>Many of her small sculptures were first exhibited at the NSW Contemporary Art Society, the only ready exhibition venue for modernist art. </p>
<p>At the same time, Hinder was entering public sculpture competitions. Most of these were local events, associated with the post-war building boom. But in 1953 she was awarded third prize out of 3502 entries in an <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-4006-5_125">international competition</a> for a memorial to the <a href="https://margelhinder.com.au/art/?id=12686">Unknown Political Prisoner</a>. Her entry shows an abstract embrace of an ethereal shape. Along with work by the other finalists, her maquette was exhibited at the Tate in London.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="sculpture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414749/original/file-20210805-27-5qx3uq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Construction, c.1954, also known as Revolving Ball.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AGNSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-melbourne-bookshop-that-ignited-australian-modernism-138300">Friday essay: the Melbourne bookshop that ignited Australian modernism</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Going big</h2>
<p>Hinder’s growing reputation led to her first public commission for a large sculpture in Sydney’s newly built <a href="https://margelhinder.com.au/art/?id=12724">Western Assurance Company Building</a>. </p>
<p>The sculptures made for public spaces are bolder, more assertive than her smaller private sculptures. This is art made to withstand the elements but also bold statements disrupting the straight lines of <a href="https://margelhinder.com.au/art/?id=12727">corporate architecture</a>.</p>
<p>The fate of the Western Assurance work is a reminder that sculptors face an extra peril in preserving their art. In the 1980s the building and the sculpture were demolished. Fortunately a passer-by alerted the Hinders who were able to salvage the pieces. The work was eventually reassembled at the University of Technology where it remains on permanent view.</p>
<p>Hinder was determined never to be defined by her gender or as a wife and mother. This was not only evident in her own single-minded pursuit of art, but in her frequent advice to young women that they must persist in their careers and not abandon art after having children. Talent, she believed, should not be wasted.</p>
<p>In the 1950s and 60s there was considerable cultural pressure on Australian women to limit themselves to domesticity. Hinder’s remarkable career was supported at every step by Frank, who sometimes did the heavy lifting (literally) in the creation of her larger works. </p>
<p>Their closeness might be one reason why previous survey exhibitions at Newcastle, Bathurst and the Art Gallery of NSW presented their work together. Now it is time for her art to stand alone.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="outdoor sculpture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414753/original/file-20210805-15-xmvpvh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sculptured Form (1969) at Woden, ACT.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/archivesact/3873792734/in/photolist-ZYbFyd-6UjcBU-tpM7h-8W6wTS-6UiVUw">Flickr/ArchivesACT</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Margel Hinder: Modern in Motion is at Heide Museum of Modern Art until 6 February 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has received funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p>
Margel Hinder was responsible for some of Australia’s most significant public sculptures in the 1960s and 70s. A major exhibition now examines the totality of her career.
Joanna Mendelssohn, Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167315
2021-09-08T14:37:51Z
2021-09-08T14:37:51Z
Virtual exhibition breathes life into Lesotho’s musical tradition and clay art
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419272/original/file-20210903-17-19jzl98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=66%2C255%2C1675%2C810&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clay figurines of musicians, by Samuele Makoanyane</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kirby Collection, University of Cape Town</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The start of the news broadcast on Radio Lesotho is signalled by an unforgettable vibrating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLbI0OCMKhE">sound</a>, rather harsh, as if made by a large bird. This is the <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/collection/islandora-20165">lesiba</a>, a musical bow. The lesiba was played by boys and men as they herded cattle, before radios and cellphones began to take the place of the national musical instrument. </p>
<p>Nowadays, there is little apparent concern for maintaining interest in the lesiba at school or any other national level in Lesotho. The unique sound of the instrument – once evocative of a rural way of life – seems to exist in a disconnected, disembodied fashion on the radio.</p>
<p>And the people who do still play Lesotho’s traditional instruments – musicians, instrument builders and innovators of their art – are seldom recognised or rewarded for their expertise.</p>
<p>But a collaboration led by the <a href="http://www.sacm.uct.ac.za">South African College of Music</a> at the University of Cape Town, aims to return attention to Lesotho’s musical tradition. The <a href="https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2020-03-31-sylvia-bruinders-music-and-art-in-lesotho">collaboration</a> involves filming musicians and exhibiting related artworks. We recorded musicians playing four instruments that are also depicted in clay figurines made by the late Lesotho artist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/samuel-makoanyane">Samuele Makoanyane</a> (1909-1944).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.iziko.org.za/">Iziko South African Museum</a>, in collaboration with <a href="https://www.dijondesign.net/">Dijondesign</a> (heritage consultants for the <a href="https://artandaboutafrica.com/artspaces/lesotho/lesotho-national-museum-and-art-gallery/">Lesotho National Museum and Art Gallery</a>), have created a <a href="https://virtual.iziko.org.za/samuele-makoanyane.html">virtual exhibition</a> of the delicate figurines. </p>
<p>They used photogrammetry – recording, measuring, and mapping – to make 3D digital models of the sculptures. These digital models are between 8cm and 18cm in height. They allow for detailed and interactive exploration. The figurines are being exhibited through Iziko South African Museum. The new Lesotho National Museum and Art Gallery will also show them at its official opening in 2022.</p>
<p>We also worked with the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/morijamuseum/">Morija Museum and Archive</a>, the Morija Art Centre and the Lesotho National Museum and Art Gallery to create a <a href="https://vimeo.com/419949659">film</a>. Called <em>Music in the Mountain Kingdom</em>, it documents Lesotho musical culture and accompanies the exhibition of figurines. Before the pandemic lockdown, we had also planned to include live performances by the musicians at the exhibitions. </p>
<h2>Makoanyane figurines</h2>
<p>The seven exquisite, little-known clay figurines in the exhibition were made by Makoanyane in the 1930s. They were commissioned by musicologist Professor <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/musical-instruments-of-the-native-people-of-south-africa/">Percival Kirby</a> of the University of the Witwatersrand, in order to document Lesotho musicians and their instruments. Made in the age-old tradition of low temperature pit firing, they are extremely fragile. They are being cared for in the <a href="http://www.sacm.uct.ac.za/sacm/kirbycollection">Kirby Collection of Musical Instruments</a> at the South African College of Music. </p>
<p>Makoanyane lived mostly in Koalabata, in the Teyateyaneng District. This is about 89km north of Lesotho’s capital, Maseru. To make the figurines, he worked from pictures in Kirby’s 1934 <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/60594">tome</a>, <em>The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Clay figurine of seated woman with a drum" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419253/original/file-20210903-17-1jnmmbp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clay figurine by Samuele Makoanyane of a woman playing moropa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kirby Collection, University of Cape Town</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The figurines are recorded in the University of Cape Town’s <a href="https://www.digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/islandora/search/Samuel%20Makoanyane%20figurines?type=dismax">Humanities Digital Collection</a>. They are named as: thomo musical bow, setolotolo musical bow, seketari (guitar), lesiba musical bow, lekolilo pipe, moropa drum and pipe. </p>
<p>The Morija Museum and Archive, Lesotho’s oldest and best known museum, also has 33 Makoanyane clay figurines in its collection. The museum helped to find living musicians to perform on four of the instruments depicted.</p>
<h2>The musicians</h2>
<p>We recorded five musicians for the virtual exhibition. An older woman, Matlali Kheoana, plays the lekope (unbraced mouth-resonated musical bow) and the sekebeku (jaws harp). Sekebeku is technically not part of the collection, but a modern manufactured instrument similar to the setolotolo in the collection.</p>
<p>Leabua Mokhele, an older man, and Molahlehi Matima, a younger man, both play the lesiba (unbraced mouth-resonated musical bow). Malefetsane Paul Mabotsane and Petar Mohai, two younger men, play the segankhulu (single-stringed bowed lute with an oil can resonator). </p>
<p>Although two instruments were doubled, the performers played very differently. In the case of the segankhulu, they even constructed their instruments differently. The lesiba and segankhulu seem to still attract younger, innovative players. But the lekope is particularly at risk and Matlali Kheoana is in all likelihood one of the last few performers of this instrument.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/419949659" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Music in the Mountain Kingdom, directed by photographer Paul Weinberg.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Live performances at the exhibition would have provided the musicians with exposure and possible earnings from their expertise. Other outcomes could have included workshops and demonstrations at universities or through museum programmes. </p>
<p>We are still working on creating learning and teaching materials for the study of Lesotho music. We hope that the repatriation of the music and musical instruments through the exhibition and film will revitalise Basotho interest and the pursuit of a sustainable indigenous music culture.</p>
<p><em>The project wishes to acknowledge Steven Sack (independent curator), Jon Weinberg (Dijondesign lead exhibitory consultant) and Stephen Wessels (Dijondesign photogrammetry specialist) for the virtual installation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167315/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvia Bruinders works for the University of Cape Town receives funding from the National Research Foundation and the A.W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>
Clay figurines of musicians, made in the 1930s, are being exhibited along with a new film of actual musicians playing the traditional instruments.
Sylvia Bruinders, Associate Professor of Musicology, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/162928
2021-07-18T20:03:42Z
2021-07-18T20:03:42Z
If I could go anywhere: Château La Coste, a sculpture and wine walk in Provence holds random surprises
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411580/original/file-20210716-15-jqbnmz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C7%2C1007%2C1008&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tom Shannon's Drop</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_carpentier/36568497070/in/photolist-XHr79N-TmK6gT-TmK6JB-TmK6VD-Pomugf-TmK6kF-TdZg2f-TmK6Ei-SLNgyQ-TmK73T-SLNgEG-QrwZL9-S176Lm-TmK78x-SLNgTh-Q6AX2S-QExV8K-S176cW-S177p5-QBitBS-S178BW-S176XU-S3JJqZ-TdZg9E-S176vb-S176rd-SLNgum-2gWMsuH-S178hC-S176Qu-S1765S-S177NS-PomsBJ-XHr7VN-S176D7-YjsEKx-soG3hk-rrFLcU-s76wVb-vkfvUU-vzw3wj-XMuQKk-2i7shDQ-rrHLkf-vBghF5-DxfoVF-vkfqbG-uEPbEf-uEP8TU-8CjNkQ">Flickr/.marc carpentier</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/if-i-could-go-anywhere-102157">this series</a> we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted.</em></p>
<p>As winter digs in across the country, I’ve been thinking of summer days in Europe. How pleasant to be back in sunny, southern France among the vineyards and hum of crickets, rather than trapped on our large island continent with little prospect of a return to Europe anytime soon. </p>
<p>One of the highlights of my visit to that region in the summer of 2017 was the surprising <a href="https://chateau-la-coste.com/en/">Château La Coste</a>, an art and architecture park in the heart of Provence, about 15 kilometres north of the university town of Aix-en-Provence. </p>
<p>Surprising, partly because the 600-acre enterprise was established by one individual with no public subsidies, and an Irishman at that. Also surprising because we’d been staying with local friends for several weeks before discovering the park’s existence nearby while idly googling. Château La Coste’s most delightful surprises still awaited us.</p>
<h2>Paddy’s place</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/paddy-mckillen-jnr-the-mystery-man-of-dublin-nightlife-1.3960320">Paddy McKillen</a>, a publicity-shy hotelier and investor, bought the land and developed the park in 2011. </p>
<p>Among his site-specific acquisitions are 34 works of art, large scale sculptures, small buildings and pavilions from renown artists and architects such as Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Tadao Ando. </p>
<p>“We looked at many, many places,” McKillen <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/chateau-la-coste-paddy-mckillen-interview-2018">told GQ</a>. “And then, one morning, I drove into Château La Coste. I didn’t even drive 20 metres — I decided to buy it right there, because it had a magical feel.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0AIbW4qdmAw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A drone’s eye view of Château La Coste’s sculpture walk.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Besides the art and architecture trail, the lure of La Coste is also its biodynamic vineyard, with adjacent cafe and fine dining restaurant. The winery is designed by Jean Nouvel, consisting of two striking metallic cylinders, and provides a suitably refined final stop after the leisurely two-hour trail through the park. </p>
<p>The vineyards spread out before us to the Luberon Hills, flanked by olive groves and lines of Judas trees. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-female-south-african-architect-reinvents-serpentine-pavilion-in-london-161444">Young female South African architect reinvents Serpentine Pavilion in London</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Enter via the bookshop</h2>
<p>We make our entrance through the sleek Tadao Ando designed building, which houses a small gallery and bookshop, and the cafe and restaurant. </p>
<p>Its V-shape appears to sit in a bed of water from certain angles and its low slung, concrete walls blend artfully with the grey-green hues of the landscape. </p>
<p>Perched in the water surrounding the building is Louise Bourgeois’s giant, menacing Crouching Spider (2007), poised to strike fear into any passing arachnophobe. </p>
<p>Nearby, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Mathematical Model Surface of Revolution (2010), a gleaming cone base sculpture ascends to the heavens, thinning to needle point towards the tip. For a bit of colourful whimsy, Alexander Calder’s Small Crinkly (1976) completes the trio of water-based sculptures.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C6%2C826%2C551&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="spider sculpture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C6%2C826%2C551&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408198/original/file-20210624-25-1y9auok.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Louise Bourgeois Crouching Spider. The Easton Foundation ADAGP Paris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-go-anywhere-id-revisit-maman-louise-bourgeois-9-metre-spider-at-londons-tate-modern-157859">If I could go anywhere: I'd revisit Maman, Louise Bourgeois' 9-metre spider at London's Tate Modern</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Wandering from the building out through the vineyards towards the hills, the art trail meanders across grassland and rocky terrain and occasionally under the canopy of large forest trees. Tom Shannon’s Drop (2009) seems to hover like a silver spaceship above the vines. </p>
<p>It is here we find the remarkable Oak Room by British sculptor <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/andy-goldsworthys-projects/">Andy Goldsworthy</a>. The visitor descends into a small, cave-like structure, whose entire curved walls and ceiling are constructed from plaited tree branches, creating a comforting and peaceful ambience. The woody odour is appealing too, reminiscent of a vineyard’s barrel room. </p>
<p>By contrast, out in the sunlight the multi-coloured Multiplied Resistence Screened (2010) by Liam Gillick, invites interactivity and play by moving colourful panels of barred walls and creating different shapes and spaces. </p>
<p>Irish-American artist Sean Scully, who made his reputation as an abstract painter, departs here with two sculptural pieces. His Wall of Light Cubed (2007), a composite wall of pink and grey geometric volcanic stone blocks, is faced across an olive grove by his Boxes Full of Air (2015), a monument of stacked rectangular frames made in corten (rusted) steel. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="stylish building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409212/original/file-20210701-21118-ingd96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tadao Ando Art Centre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Château La Coste/Photo: Andrew Pattman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-in-lockdown-but-is-moving-to-the-country-right-for-you-148807">It seemed like a good idea in lockdown, but is moving to the country right for you?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Happy wandering</h2>
<p>It’s a joyful experience to wander through the landscape in the waning days of summer, “discovering” works of art as they seemingly appear at random throughout the estate. But of course, their placement is not random. Owner McKillen doesn’t like the phrase “sculpture park” but <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/chateau-la-coste-paddy-mckillen-interview-2018">notes</a> there is a “science to where the pieces are located”. </p>
<p>There are so many notable works, created by so many renown artists, it is difficult to single any out. Tracey Emin, Tunga, Sophie Calle, Guggi, Richard Serra, Tom Shannon, Jenny Holzer and Paul Matisse (yes, grandson of Henri) to name a few. Even former REM singer Michael Stipe is represented (Fox, 2008).</p>
<p>Two structures stand out. </p>
<p>One is the tiny chapel designed by Tadao Ando, whose elegant interior invites contemplation and feels somehow connected to the natural world outside with its rough sandstone walls and glass portico. A large red cross made of glass beads (Jean-Michel Othoniel 2008) dominates the courtyard behind the chapel. </p>
<p>And of course, Frank Gehry’s Music Pavilion provides a focal point of the estate, with its striking deconstructed roof and off kilter angles that is Gehry’s signature. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="outdoor sculpture" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/409208/original/file-20210701-21128-1cywbb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frank O. Gehry’s Pavillon de Musique.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Château La Coste/Photograph: Andrew Pattman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-go-anywhere-marie-antoinettes-private-boudoir-and-mechanical-mirror-room-at-versailles-160599">If I could go anywhere: Marie Antoinette's private boudoir and mechanical mirror room at Versailles</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Château La Coste is one of the earliest examples of what’s now known as “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301272685_Oenotourism_and_conservation_a_holistic_approach_to_special_interest_tourism_from_a_cultural_heritage_perspective_-_the_Azienda_Agricola_Model">oenotourism</a>”, a growth industry where wineries in or close to tourist areas also house and exhibit contemporary art. The exhibitions are usually temporary but La Coste is an exception. </p>
<p>Most acquisitions will be added to their permanent collection over the next few years, <a href="https://artreview.com/blogpost-oenotourism/">reportedly</a> including an installation by artist <a href="https://www.olafureliasson.net/">Olafur Eliasson</a>. Architect Richard Rogers <a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2021/02/15/richard-rogers-drawing-gallery-cantilevered-art-gallery-chateau-la-coste-france/">just completed a cantilevered pavilion</a> jutting out from the hillside. The property has 28 villa suites for a longer stay. Another reason to get on a plane as soon as travel restrictions are lifted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Felton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Of all the places to be right now, picking your way between sculptures in the French countryside, with a glass of wine to finish, sounds ideal.
Emma Felton, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163849
2021-07-06T10:27:45Z
2021-07-06T10:27:45Z
Diana statue: What it reveals about the challenges of sculpting famous people
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409613/original/file-20210705-27-1q3abs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1920%2C1080&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley photographs his sculpture of Princess Diana</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8-BBBLJ04">YouTube/BBC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The excitement around the uncloaking of a statue of Diana, Princess of Wales, at Kensington Palace on what would have been her 60th birthday seemed to spread around the world last week. But it wasn’t just the prospect of the reunion of Prince William and Prince Harry that sent the press and the public wild with anticipation. </p>
<p>In fact, like many tributes made in the images of the public figures we revere, it was also the appearance of the sculpture itself. Here was a memorial to a woman with one of the most recognisable faces in the world - but did it actually look like her? According to many critics, not quite. These reactions reveal the danger of sculpting a modern media star in bronze.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57684597">The sculpture</a> of Diana with three children is by Ian Rank-Broadley. You might not know the name, but you will know his work. His <a href="https://www.royalmint.com/royalty/queen-elizabeth/">1998 profile of Queen Elizabeth II</a> circulates on UK and Commonwealth coins. He has made relief portraits of Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. <a href="https://www.ianrank-broadley.co.uk/work/michael-sandle-ra/">His medals are outstanding</a>, and he has made several public memorial sculptures. This sort of work demands a conservatism on the sculptor’s part, and there are few British sculptors with the practised ability – or inclination, perhaps – to work in this way.</p>
<p>Critics have been <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/660933/newly-unveiled-princess-diana-sculpture-prompts-criticism/">harsh</a> about Rank-Broadley’s sculpture. The Guardian’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jul/01/the-diana-statue-ian-rank-broadley-sculpture">Jonathan Jones</a>, for example, writes that it was “modelled apparently with thickly gloved hands and no photo to consult”. He gets it wrong. The surface of the sculpture is uncomfortably smooth – over rather than under controlled. And there are far too many photos of Diana for any one person to contend with.</p>
<p>The basic problem is put in simple terms by <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9753181/PATRICK-JEPHSON-says-Diana-statue-isnt-going-shake-rafters-sculptor-impossible-task.html">Diana’s former private secretary</a>: Diana “was the most photographed woman in history and everybody has their own idea of what she should look like”. </p>
<h2>The decline of figurative sculptures</h2>
<p>The challenge of photography to sculpture is bigger than just this example. We see so many photographs each day that their conventions <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/196/196428/how-to-see-the-world/9780141977409.html">shape the way we think about and see the world</a>. To get a sense of what I mean by this, imagine a photograph of an athlete crossing the finishing line. Such an image may well impress the viewer, but it doesn’t seem strange. Take the same image into drawing, or even more so into sculpture and it looks contrived, like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXrwWnu7agk">Han Solo frozen in carbonite</a>. </p>
<p>Figurative sculpture has been in crisis for a century. From 1850, across Europe and the US, there was a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40988487?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=statuomanie&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dstatuomanie&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A9a689c2088b1478cb6885bff4738bc57">mania for statues</a>. But by around 1910 the public had already had enough. The need for memorials following the two world wars provided an unfortunate, brief stimulus but in western democracies, the very idea of a public language for sculpture was tainted by the revival of figuration in both fascist and communist dictatorships. </p>
<p>Consequently, sculpture followed the movement of paintings from the academy to the studio, from public conversation to private innovation. Today, there are few art schools in the UK where a student can learn how to model in clay. It’s as though this skill is no longer needed. To cap it all, our public sculptures seem to increasingly be on the wrong <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/statues-of-victoria-and-elizabeth-ii-toppled-in-winnipeg-by-protestors-angry-at-deaths-of-indigenous-children?utm_source=The+Art+Newspaper+Newsletters&utm_campaign=4a496d55f4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_01_09_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c459f924d0-4a496d55f4-62204362">side of history</a>. There is now no commonly accepted style for public figurative sculpture on which the sculptor might rely.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-museum-display-what-happens-next-for-the-fallen-statue-162376">Edward Colston museum display: what happens next for the fallen statue</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Analysing the Diana sculpture</h2>
<p>This does not mean that the artist has free reign. The most important person is the sculptor’s subject, not the sculptor. The result for Rank-Broadley’s Diana is an impersonal and awkward smoothness. The sculptor has stepped back too far from the work. It’s an oddly airbrushed image. Compare this sculpture with Oscar Nemon’s rugged <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw236307/Oscar-Nemon-the-Queen-Mother-and-Baron-Harding-of-Petherton-with-Nemons-statue-of-Viscount-Montgomery-of-Alamain">Viscount Montgomery of Alamain</a>, or Jacob Epstein’s bust of the Italian actor <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw126248/Gina-Lollobrigida-with-her-bust-by-Sir-Jacob-Epstein?search=sp&OConly=true&sText=jacob+epstein&wPage=2&rNo=48">Gina Lollobrigida</a> and you will see what I mean: the hair, clothing and skin are modelled differently and with character.</p>
<p>The sculptor’s efforts are more apparent in the statue’s composition. Diana’s stance is protective and maternal, like a madonna. This protective pyramidal composition draws attention to its apex, which is formed by Diana’s head. The emphasis is skilfully balanced by her strong horizontal belt, which is at head height to the two children in front. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1410614124745134080"}"></div></p>
<p>This gives the children a stronger presence, and it seems important to the meaning of the work, speaking both to the princes’ relationship with their late mother and of Diana’s interest in children. These aspects are both symbolically and sculpturally successful. Interestingly, the belt and the rest of Diana’s attire seem to come straight from the photograph shown above.</p>
<p>But an unfortunate consequence of this strong, protective shape is that it is so stable that it appears static. Here again, the camera works against the artist. The nation’s memory of Diana is of a mercurial, light and tragically brief life, a figure in motion. Diana was many things, but she was not stolid. What works for the sculpture is at odds with our televisual expectations. </p>
<p>In the laconic utterance of one art historian who preferred to remain unnamed, sculpting is <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/blog/quite-butch-or-wonderful-new-statue-of-princess-diana-seriously-splits-opinion">“a tough gig”</a>“.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163849/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benedict Carpenter van Barthold does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Reactions to the new figure embody the problems that come with recreating the images of modern icons
Benedict Carpenter van Barthold, Pricipal Lecturer, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163116
2021-06-30T12:47:46Z
2021-06-30T12:47:46Z
Why this Rodin scholar would gladly see the back of The Thinker
<p>I’m a Rodin scholar with a secret: I don’t like The Thinker. I’ve always been vexed by the fame of this sculpture by French artist Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) of a hyper-muscular man lost in thought.</p>
<p>It <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/intellectuals-for-trump">wears a red “Make America Great Again”
cap</a> in a New Yorker cartoon. Speaking in a thick New York accent, it flirts with a dainty marble sculpture by flexing its biceps in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl-KlsK6wXY">Night at the Museum II</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/17/row-over-sale-banksys-sculpture-drinker-sothebys">Banksy’s version</a> sits in a drunken stupor with a traffic cone on its head.</p>
<p>Even the Tate Modern’s new breathtaking exhibition, <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-rodin">The Making of Rodin</a>, cannot dim The Thinker’s in-your-face machismo. The colossal plaster version in the main room “manspreads” into the visitor’s view and space.</p>
<p>Why did The Thinker (1880) become so popular? And what is it about this sculpture that makes me so uncomfortable?</p>
<h2>Masculine Thinker</h2>
<p>The original Thinker sits atop Rodin’s most important sculpture, <a href="http://enfer.musee-rodin.fr/en/home">The Gates of Hell</a> (1880-1917), originally intended to serve as the main entrance for a museum of the decorative arts. Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, a medieval poem that saw the author taken by the Ancient Roman poet Virgil on a tour of the nine circles of hell, Rodin’s monumental set of doors shows the tormented bodies of the damned. The Thinker, probably conceived as Dante or Minos, looms over its fellow figures, seeming to conjure the suffering that takes place around it.</p>
<p>At the time of its creation, the male body was an object of intense focus in France. The <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/faces-of-degeneration/CB004DBD31B0B8A6BC426977DE1C252F">weakness of its male citizens</a> was seen as one of the causes of the country’s humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Statue of man thinking surrounded by an orgy of other people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408866/original/file-20210629-24-z6iryp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408866/original/file-20210629-24-z6iryp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408866/original/file-20210629-24-z6iryp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408866/original/file-20210629-24-z6iryp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408866/original/file-20210629-24-z6iryp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408866/original/file-20210629-24-z6iryp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408866/original/file-20210629-24-z6iryp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Thinker in The Gates of Hell at the Musée Rodin, France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker#/media/File:Le_penseur_de_la_Porte_de_lEnfer_(mus%C3%A9e_Rodin)_(4528252054).jpg">Jean-Pierre Dalbéra</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The French government feared the population’s ongoing degeneration, while <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k850762?rk=42918;4">medical treatises</a> described the symptoms: hysteria, prostitution, alcoholism, and widespread decadence. Vigorous exercise, bodybuilding, and willpower were seen as remedies, with new magazines sprouting up to promote this hyper-muscular ideal. In 1890, <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9693246c/f18.item">La Revue athlétique</a> proclaimed that the new magazine would give young men the tools “to love France with boundless love, that their hearts be true and their muscles hard”.</p>
<p>In 1904, the same year that the larger-than-life Thinker debuted in Paris, the cover of the first issue of <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8960026?rk=21459;2">La Culture physique</a>, a magazine dedicated to bodybuilding, illustrated the statue <a href="https://www.khm.at/en/objectdb/detail/67188/?lv=detail">Apoxyomenos</a> (Scraper) from the ancient city Ephesus in Turkey, which had been unearthed less than ten years before. The athletic bodies of ancient Greek sculptures served as models for turn-of-the-century bodybuilders, who would then <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8960026/f161.item">pose like classical statues</a>. Meanwhile, art students would learn the classical ideal by drawing the bodies of well-built men. </p>
<p>Rodin must have been aware of the craze for bodybuilding when he decided to enlarge and market the solitary figure of The Thinker, thereby taking advantage of the pre-existing associations between sculpture and bodybuilding.</p>
<p>The rippling muscles and pensive pose of The Thinker too were inspired by classical sculptures such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvedere_Torso">Torso Belvedere</a>, as well as Michelangelo’s later Renaissance sculpture of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medici_Chapel#/media/File:Life_of_Michael_Angelo,_1912_-_Monument_of_Lorenzo_de_Medici.jpg">Lorenzo de’ Medici</a>. Unsurprisingly, a bodybuilder in the pose of The Thinker eventually appeared on the pages of <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5422630b/f2.item">La Culture physique</a>.</p>
<h2>Sexual Thinker</h2>
<p>Sexuality was integral to the obsession with the healthy male body in France. The government blamed men’s lack of virility for its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#1800_to_20th_century">alarmingly declining birthrate</a>. </p>
<p>La Culture physique noted that the Prussian strongman-cum-British entrepreneur <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Sandow">Eugen Sandow</a> – whom it referred to as <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8960026/f9.item">“the king of plastic beauty”</a> – had fathered a child <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8960026/f10.item">“full of vigour”, “prov[ing]</a> that the beauty and health of the athlete were transmitted to his progeniture”. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a coincidence that The Thinker’s awkward pose — right elbow on left knee — facilitates a good view of its large genitals, clearly visible from the front and situated at the very centre of the sculpture. One Rodin supporter <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k97739185/f292.item">claimed</a> that “everyone should have the right to see [The Thinker’s] beautiful teaching on health and on the ideal”.</p>
<p>The rugged facial features of The Thinker also linked this figure to the working class in the eyes of contemporaries.</p>
<p>In 1906, when the enlarged sculpture was inaugurated on a <a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LuPeMDdfqyI/V4x5IYOdW-I/AAAAAAAAZRQ/VnimZChICcYOVd-wfuNW-5ZMRSp18n0rQCLcB/s1600/2863_ff0cf86dad47ca4.jpg">ten-foot-tall plinth</a> in front of the Pantheon, the temple to France’s “great men”, the press compared it to prehistoric man, a soldier and <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k712024d.r=l%27univers%20et%20le%20monde?rk=7596604;0">a labourer</a> who “thinks of the meagre salary received for a day’s work”. </p>
<p>This classist discourse led critics to note the paradoxical character of this sculpture – “it is <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1164029s/f159.item">not from muscle</a> that thought issues” — and to call Rodin the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Vdo0hTh0INgC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=Michelangelo+of+the+gorillas+rodin&source=bl&ots=j0sN6eam1M&sig=ACfU3U3NnWPB64ZIxUex_keZ4HkMwPZKHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLt-K8nb_xAhUEhlwKHayCDSIQ6AEwGnoECA4QAw#v=onepage&q=Michelangelo%20of%20the%20gorillas%20rodin&f=false">“Michelangelo of the gorillas”</a>.</p>
<p>This likening of The Thinker’s physicality to animality led back to Rodin himself, who was known for his lascivious affairs and purported voracious sexual appetite. The modern public understood sexuality to be a source for (male) artistic creativity. Rodin had capitalised on this connection in his phallic monument to the writer Honoré de Balzac (1898), which shows this giant of French 19th-century literature <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/207498">masturbating</a> underneath his cloak.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Statue of writer Honoré Balzac." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408205/original/file-20210624-23-1ho6f8c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408205/original/file-20210624-23-1ho6f8c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408205/original/file-20210624-23-1ho6f8c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408205/original/file-20210624-23-1ho6f8c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408205/original/file-20210624-23-1ho6f8c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408205/original/file-20210624-23-1ho6f8c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408205/original/file-20210624-23-1ho6f8c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rodin’s statue of Honoré Balzac, in which it looks like the French writer is masturbating beneath his coat.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/207498">The Met</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that writers who both praised and criticised The Thinker saw it as a kind of <a href="https://archive.org/details/augusterodinmanh00mauc/page/88/mode/2up">self-portrait</a>, standing in for Rodin as the generator of the artwork. It became so closely linked with the artist that a bronze version was placed on his <a href="https://www.meudon.musee-rodin.fr/en/musee/collections/oeuvres/penseur-meudon">grave</a> on the grounds of his home in Meudon, outside Paris, where it can still be visited today.</p>
<p>The classist and sexist connotations of The Thinker continue to resonate, as we’ve seen in its recent guises as Trump supporter, womaniser and drunkard. Perhaps this is why The Thinker has inspired violence: first in 1905 when a man with mental illness <a href="https://archive.org/details/rodinsthinkerdil0000else">hacked a plaster version</a> to pieces in Paris and, more recently, in 1970 when explosives affixed to a bronze cast in front of the Cleveland Museum, <a href="https://www.clevelandart.org/research/conservation/rodins-thinker">possibly in protest to US presence in Vietnam</a>, destroyed part of the sculpture. </p>
<p>Its intimidating character — looming over you, imposing itself in your space with its aggressive manliness — has always made some people uncomfortable, me included. In 1904 the critic Louis <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6858593c/f79.item">Flandrin commented</a>: “This coarse man seems to me a malcontent who ruminates on his anger.” Embodying virile masculinity, exemplifying outdated sexist and classist ideas, The Thinker is now past its prime. </p>
<p>Rodin’s body of work is full of sculpture that is much more worthy of our attention, including the small terracotta <a href="https://www.artfund.org/whats-on/exhibitions/2021/04/29/rodin-exhibition">study</a> for The Thinker that is also in the Tate Modern exhibition. It shows an artist experimenting with clay to fashion a figure in which the flesh expresses both uncertainty and energy while the body leans in with curiosity. Here is Rodin grappling with new ideas rather than simply dwelling on old ones.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163116/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Ruiz-Gómez has received funding from the Research Councils UK, the Leverhulme Trust, the Wellcome Trust and the Kress Foundation. She wrote an essay for the catalogue of the Tate Modern exhibition: The Making of Rodin.</span></em></p>
All muscles and sensuous flesh, its hyper and toxic masculinity puts this Rodin scholar off the artist’s most famous artwork.
Natasha Ruiz-Gómez, Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Essex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/162521
2021-06-24T20:10:29Z
2021-06-24T20:10:29Z
Friday essay: rethinking the myth of Daphne, a woman who chooses eternal silence over sexual assault
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407802/original/file-20210623-25-1wrg6mc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=221%2C14%2C4662%2C3238&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, made between 1622 and 1625.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stefano Chiacchiarini/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ancient Greek myths and folktales are shaping popular culture, from big-budget <a href="https://screenrant.com/best-movies-greek-mythology-fans-ranked-300-hercules-clash-titans/">films</a> to television <a href="https://screenrant.com/best-tv-shows-greek-mythology/">series</a> to <a href="https://usflis.libguides.com/c.php?g=826763&p=5911146">novels</a>. You can even find <a href="https://www.stillwhite.com/blog/goddess-vibes">advice</a> on how to look like a Greek goddess or heroine on your wedding day, with gowns inspired by Aphrodite and Helen of Troy (among others).</p>
<p>In particular, myths of transformation have appeal to artists and writers who are attracted to the challenge of retelling stories of shifting forms — the strange movements between human and animal or plant. Such states of flux can shed light on our own understanding of identity.</p>
<p>Among the many mythical figures changed through metamorphosis is the nymph or dryad, Daphne. One of the mythical beings who cared for trees, springs and other natural elements, Daphne was the child of Peneus, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Thessaly">Thessalian</a> river god. </p>
<p>Her decidedly sad and violent story, in which she is transformed into a tree to escape the lustful attention of the god Apollo, gives rise to the ancient explanation of the creation of the laurel tree, known as “daphne” by the ancient Greeks. </p>
<p>Daphne’s plight continues to intrigue artists. Today, new interpretations are finding fresh ways of reading this influential, much contested myth, with its themes of sexual violence and bodily autonomy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407801/original/file-20210623-22-hafaml.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrea Schiavone, Apollo and Daphne, 1542.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0062%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DP%3Aentry+group%3D5%3Aentry%3Dparthenius-harpers">Parthenius</a> (1st Century BCE-1st Century CE) provides the earliest complete extant version of the myth of Daphne and Apollo. As a grammarian, Parthenius collected stories from texts now lost to us. Still, his version of the story can be traced to earlier works dating to the 3rd century BCE, suggesting the myth is even older.</p>
<p>Parthenius’ version begins with <a href="https://www.theoi.com/Heros/LeukipposPisatios.html">Leucippus</a>, the son of a mythic king of Pisa, falling in love with the beautiful nymph. Daphne was favoured by the goddess Artemis, who bestowed upon her the gift of shooting a straight arrow. Leucippus contrived to spend time with Daphne by dressing as a woman and joining her during a hunt. </p>
<p>But this enraged Apollo, who also desired Daphne. He encouraged Daphne and her fellow female hunters to bathe in a nearby stream. When Leucippus refused to join them, the women stripped him, discovering his ruse and stabbing him with their spears.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theoi.com/Text/Parthenius.html#15">Apollo, then took his chance</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>but Daphne, seeing Apollo advancing upon her, took vigorously to flight; then, as he pursued her, she implored Zeus that she might be translated away from mortal sight, and she is supposed to have become the bay tree which is called daphne after her.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407796/original/file-20210623-26-3njv51.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Apollo and Daphne by Rupert Bunny, early 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Destroy this beautiful figure’</h2>
<p>The Latin poet, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ovid-Roman-poet">Ovid</a> (43 BCE-17 CE) retells Daphne’s story in Book 1 of his epic poem of transformation myths, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-ovids-metamorphoses-and-reading-rape-65316">Metamorphoses</a>. Ovid explains that Apollo’s desire was caused by Cupid, whom Apollo had slighted. In response, Cupid shot Apollo, causing him to feel intense passion for Daphne. But she was shot with another type of arrow, ensuring she would not reciprocate his attraction.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-ovids-metamorphoses-and-reading-rape-65316">Guide to the classics: Ovid's Metamorphoses and reading rape</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ovid’s version depicts a frightened Daphne fleeing her pursuer with language that paints her as a hare hunted by a greyhound. Daphne’s fear of being caught by Apollo as he chases her is evoked with visceral realism. Her transformation comes when she no longer has the strength to run:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With her strength used up, she went pale with fear and,
overcome by the effort of her frantic flight and gazing upon the waters of Peneus,
she cried: ‘bring help, father, if your waters possess divine power!
By changing it, destroy this beautiful figure by which I generated too much desire.’</p>
<p>With her prayer scarcely completed, a heavy torpor took possession of her limbs: her soft breasts were bound by a thin layer of bark,
her hair grew into foliage, her arms into branches;
her feet, just now so swift, hold fast in sluggish roots,
a crest possessed her facial features, radiance alone remained in her.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even without human form, Daphne is not saved from Apollo’s lust. After her transformation, Apollo reaches out to touch the trunk of the tree, which shrinks from him. </p>
<p>In the final lines of this episode, Ovid reveals what Apollo does with this tree’s leaves: they are woven into a laurel wreath and around his quiver and lyre, to be used in rituals performed in his honour.</p>
<p>While Daphne is saved from the assault of her human form, she is nonetheless forcibly objectified for the sake of Apollo’s desire.</p>
<h2>Loss of self</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1268&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1268&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407793/original/file-20210623-27-4ft9e3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1268&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since antiquity, the story of Daphne has been retold over and over again – painted, sculpted, performed and analysed.</p>
<p>We can gaze at Daphne in all manner of poses in museums and galleries throughout Europe. The Galleria Borghese in Rome displays Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Daphne being seized by Apollo in a life-size, marble statue. </p>
<p>Completed in 1625, it depicts Apollo’s intense determination as he seizes the nymph by the waist with one hand even though she is in the very process of turning into a tree. </p>
<p>While his face is eerily peaceful, Daphne’s replicates the fear that underscores Ovid’s description. </p>
<p>In this way, Bernini’s sculpture is Ovid’s poetry in material form. Masterpieces of art and literature, respectively, compromise us by the beauty that depicts a narrative of attempted rape.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407803/original/file-20210623-24-outwxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A rear view of the Bernini sculpture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eva Petrilllo/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Louvre has Giambattista Tiepolo’s version of the myth, dating to approximately 1774. Here, a baby Cupid hoists Daphne as if she were a ballerina while Apollo seems somewhat discombobulated. An aged Peneus slumps on the ground, seemingly exhausted from his transformative magic. </p>
<p>While Bernini’s Daphne is shocked and traumatised, Tiepolo’s nymph — with her attendant narrative of fear and suffering — has been tamed for a genteel Baroque audience. This silly and passive rendition of sexual assault is accentuated by the delicate shoots of foliage that grow from Daphne’s right hand.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407794/original/file-20210623-28-naynlp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Giambattista Tiepolo, Apollo and Daphne, circa 1774.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historically, scholarship has shown a deep-seated patriarchal interpretation of the myth, rendering Daphne’s role in her own transformation as secondary to the actions of masculine power, represented by Apollo.</p>
<p>The creation of the laurel wreath, for instance, recorded by Ovid, has been interpreted as an act of mourning, turning Daphne’s transformed body into a symbol of <a href="https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195397703/student/materials/chapter11/summary/">Apollo’s grief</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/reading-ovid-in-the-age-of-metoo">Feminist interpretations</a>, however, remind us Apollo’s intention was to rape Daphne. Thus his grief was firmly based on his failed attempt and nothing more. These interpretations encourage us to consider the intense violence inherent in the myth.</p>
<p>As a tree, leafy and earth-bound, Daphne’s loss of self is both physical and psychological. No longer human, she loses the ability to express herself through her facial features, and the power of speech. Like so many women in the myths of transformation, Daphne is perpetually silenced. She can only “speak” through the rustling of leaves.</p>
<p>The burden of women’s historic experience of sexual harassment, violation and rape is also vividly chronicled in Daphne’s story. Ovid, a master of narratives of violence and abuse, reveals Daphne’s burden by suggesting she sees herself as partly accountable for Apollo’s pursuit of her. In her prayer to her father, she begs to be relieved of her beauty, which she believes has caused the god’s actions.</p>
<p>Her pleas have echoed across millennia in the self-admonishment of many women and their desire to become invisible to the male gaze. Daphne achieves a form of invisibility — or so she thinks — in her new form as a mass of leaves and bark. But, as Ovid tells us, not even as a tree can she escape the god’s persistent lust.</p>
<p>The sheer absurdity of the entire myth begs the question: would a woman prefer to become a tree than be raped?</p>
<h2>Modern interpretations</h2>
<p>In the 20th century, Salvador Dalí, <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artist/paul-delvaux">Paul Delvaux</a> and <a href="https://www.zadkine.com/">Ossip Zadkine</a> all reworked Daphne; painting and sculpting her for a modernist audience. </p>
<p>Zadkine’s sculpture, <a href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/ossip-zadkine/daphne-2">Daphné (1958)</a> mirrors yet mocks Bernini’s work, rendering the nymph as a powerful root-bound tree of monumental grandeur and ungainly defiance. She, however, remains silent.</p>
<p>In a new exhibition opening at Melbourne’s Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Australian audiences can see some of Daphne’s incarnations over the centuries, including early works, such as <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/382796">Anthonie Waterloo</a>’s etching of Apollo and Daphne (1650s) and Agostino dei Musi’s engraving from 1515. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407799/original/file-20210623-22-5j5f58.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Agostino dei Musi, Apollo and Daphne 1515, engraving, 23.0 x 17.0 cm. Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph: AGNSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Traditional works celebrating the so-called grandeur of classical mythology so much in vogue in the Renaissance (and beyond) are joined and contested by competing interpretations. These include Erik Bünger’s Nature see you (2021), a video essay on the world-famous but inherently vulnerable gorilla, Koko; and Ho Tzu Nyen’s 2 or 3 Tigers (2015), a digital projection that meditates on tigers in the Malay context. </p>
<p>In both works, we see the story of Daphne as sentient nature in the form of gorilla and tiger, and nature both mythical and metaphorical. We also see nature as silent and therefore fragile in a world of human gods who are just as ruthless and destructive as their mythical counterparts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407800/original/file-20210623-21-mh7r4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ho Tzu Nyen, 2 or 3 Tigers 2015 (video still), synchronized two-channel HD projection, 12 channel sound, 18:46 mins.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Daphne’s humanity — her womanhood — is also referenced in Wingu Tingima’s paint on canvas, Kawun (2005). Based on the traditional Indigenous Australian story of the Seven Sisters, Tingima’s work suggests the trauma of women as they travel to escape the desires of the Ancestral Being <a href="https://songlines.nma.gov.au/walinynga-rock-art/4/hotspot/wati-nyiru/content/2/layer/1/">Nyiru</a>, who is determined to take one of them as his wife. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/songlines-tracking-the-seven-sisters-is-a-must-visit-exhibition-for-all-australians-89293">Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is a must-visit exhibition for all Australians</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Like Daphne, the sisters escape by ascending to the sky and transforming into the constellation known as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568">Pleiades</a>.</p>
<p>This rich exhibition approaches the myth of Daphne from many angles. Working back and forth through time, mixing traditional ways of seeing with vital contemporary narratives (including the Anthropocene, #MeToo, and <a href="https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-post-humanism/">post-humanism</a>), it is an uncomfortable reminder of the power of myth and its own vulnerability to the forces of transformation.</p>
<p><em>A Biography of Daphne opens at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne on June 26 and runs to September 5 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162521/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This ancient myth, in which a nymph transforms herself into a tree to escape the lustful attention of the god Apollo, has inspired countless retellings in art. Its themes resonate today.
Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of Newcastle
Tanika Koosmen, PhD Candidate, University of Newcastle
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160603
2021-05-18T05:09:03Z
2021-05-18T05:09:03Z
How to survive as a figurative sculptor? WA’s The Syndicate is a novel form of philanthropy in the spirit of the Medicis
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399906/original/file-20210511-14-yhuwce.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C76%2C2942%2C3010&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A gallery view of Paul Kaptein's current show.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ted Snell/author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For any serious artist, funding the production of ambitious works — let alone finding the resources to keep yourself alive during the process — can be daunting. </p>
<p>However, if studio expenses, rent, and the cost of living are taken care of, an artist is free to fulfil their aesthetic aspirations. The old model of patronage exemplified by the great <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Medici">Italian families of the Renaissance</a>, such as the Medicis, was on Western Australian artist <a href="http://www.simongilby.com.au/gallery.php">Simon Gilby</a>’s mind when he contacted businessmen and art collectors Ron Wise and Lloyd Horn 15 years ago. He was seeking financial support for two years to create a body of new work.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=961&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399913/original/file-20210511-15-6elsn2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1207&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Medici family of Florence helped support Michelangelo, creator of the statue David.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wise and Horn stepped up. They invited five other collectors – all successful businessmen and women – to join them in providing Gilby with the funds to make what he describes as life-sized, figurative sculptures.</p>
<p>These seven members of the group – dubbed The Syndicate by Gilby – each contributed $14,000. They made regular studio visits to see him at work. It was a learning experience for all. </p>
<p>Gilby produced ten free standing figures fabricated from welded steel. They included men and women frozen in time, some punctured by skeletal fish, others with their heads in cages and the mythical figure Daphne transforming into a laurel tree. It was a remarkable tour-de-force.</p>
<p>At the end, The Syndicate members met and drew lots. The first person chose an available work they would like to own; then the next, and so on. An exhibition followed.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-to-next-for-arts-philanthropy-in-australia-63410">Where to next for arts philanthropy in Australia?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>That first commission was intended to be a one-off, but its success led the group to continue. Since then, it has assisted four WA artists, Peter Dailey, Stuart Elliot and Paul Kaptein.</p>
<p>Each artist has been given the opportunity to create works with the confidence of a guaranteed pre-sale. However, as Horn explains, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’ve always stressed upon The Syndicate members that the idea of the project is to support the artist and that they should look upon the work they receive at the end of the commission as a bonus.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Syndicate commits to support an artist for two years to complete a project framed around figurative sculptures.</p>
<p>WA has an established history of figurative sculpture, which can be traced back to Pietro Porcelli. He peppered the state with statues of well known men — explorer and politician John Forrest, engineer C.Y. O'Connor, politician Sir James Lee Steere — at the turn of the last century.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=954&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399910/original/file-20210511-18-10wgmm8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1198&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Porcelli working on a statue of Irish engineer C.Y. O'Connor, circa 1910.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This figurative tradition was revived in the early 1960s by <a href="https://www.culturalprecinct.uwa.edu.au/artists/arkeveld">Hans Arkeveld</a>. Focussing on life-size, figurative work also makes it easier to understand what you’re getting at the end of the project, says Horn. “Everyone knows what to expect.”</p>
<p>While the schedule has blown out on occasions, the collectors allowed each artist the time required to complete their project.</p>
<p>The artists are encouraged to seek additional support from local and national funding bodies, but The Syndicate ensures an exhibition and catalogue are included as part of the package. This level of philanthropic beneficence is remarkable. The opportunities it has provided to each of the four artists has enabled the creation of an outstanding body of works — body being the operative word.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.paulkaptein.com/work">Paul Kaptein</a> is the latest sculptor to benefit from The Syndicate’s largesse, pushing his practice into entirely new territory. It has enabled him to tackle the practicalities of making multiple large works in cast concrete.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=643&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/399908/original/file-20210511-23-z6z3ka.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The work is unsettling and disruptive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ted Snell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The final group of ten men who now stand stoically <a href="https://mailchi.mp/8d841ed7dd59/ya-better-work-this-time-4880782?e=%5BUNIQID%5D">within the atrium space of Old Customs House in Fremantle</a> are a testament to the commitment of both artist and benefactors.</p>
<p>These new cast works have a fragility that marks them out from their carved predecessors. Dismembered and reconfigured, they seem adrift in the world, glowing luminously within the light-drenched interior. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robot-sculpture-coming-to-a-gallery-near-you-80804">Robot sculpture, coming to a gallery near you</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>All These Mountains Will Melt at Dawn depicts a semi-naked torso rising from the ground with another man’s feet standing on his soles. His body is fit, his muscles toned and his arms resolutely at his side, though his skin seems flayed and in tatters. </p>
<p>Although dismembered, the body retains its dignity and strength. Who is this man, and how do we approach him? What support can we offer? What does he need from us? </p>
<p>These existential questions are palpable and unsettling. Thanks to The Syndicate, Kaptein’s work will stand as a record of our disruptive and distressing times. </p>
<p>Generously, the project continues with the announcement that <a href="https://www.janmurphygallery.com.au/artist/linde-ivimey/">Linde Ivimey</a> will be the fifth artist supported by the group.</p>
<p>The first women to be invited, Ivimey’s figurative works, which use recycled materials, including bone and skin, are unlikely to be life-sized due to her methodology of combining techniques such as sewing, crochet and welding. But they will continue to unsettle and disturb. </p>
<p><em>Paul Kaptein’s exhibition All These Mountains Will Melt At Dawn at the Old Customs House Gallery in Fremantle runs till the end of May.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160603/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ted Snell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It takes time and money to create large scale sculptures. A new exhibition of works in cast concrete is testament to a remarkable philanthropic project.
Ted Snell, Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/154128
2021-02-23T13:28:03Z
2021-02-23T13:28:03Z
When men started to obsess over six-packs
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386305/original/file-20210224-17-1duvbm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C418%2C3622%2C2780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ideal male body didn't always include chiseled abs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/summer-1975-three-models-pose-on-a-hotel-bora-bora-sailing-news-photo/1171950396?adppopup=true">Chris von Wangenheim/Conde Nast via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The cultural obsession with six-pack abdominals shows no signs of abating. And if <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.1722620">research into male body image</a> is to be believed, it will likely only grow, thanks to social media. </p>
<p>Today, there’s an entire industry centered on obtaining – and maintaining – chiseled abs. They’re the subject of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mens-Health-Big-Book-Ever/dp/1609618742">books</a> and social media posts, while <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Muscles_in_the_Movies/yXwCEAAAQBAJ?hl=en">every action movie star</a> seems to sport them. Pressure is also <a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/a19909906/what-it-takes-to-get-a-six-pack/">mounting on women</a> to sport six-pack abs as body ideals for athletic women have evolved. </p>
<p>All of this raises the question, when did the six-pack craze start? </p>
<p>It may seem like a relatively recent phenomenon, a byproduct of the <a href="https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A742709&dswid=-6454">fitness culture boom</a> in the 1970s and 1980s, when <a href="https://lwlies.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/pumping-iron-arnold-schwarzenegger-1-1108x0-c-default.jpg">Arnold Schwarzenegger</a> and <a href="https://d3d8y6yhucfd29.cloudfront.net/sports-product-image/4-t4841196-.jpg">Rambo</a> reigned, and men’s muscle mags and <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/jane-fonda-workout-videos-health-aerobics-yoga-class-pass">aerobics</a> took off. </p>
<p>History proves otherwise. In fact, Western culture’s fascination with chiseled abdominals can be traced to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the ideal male body image in the West started to shift.</p>
<h2>Greeks inspire envy</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030637262">While I was researching Irish health and body cultures</a>, I became fascinated with changing male body ideals.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Metamorphoses_of_Fat/tWSRAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">French historian George Vigarello</a> has written about how the ideal male figure and male silhouette shifted in Western society. British and American cultures in the 17th, 18th and, to a certain degree, the 19th centuries valued large or rotund male bodies. The reasons for this were relatively straightforward: Rich men could afford to eat more, and a larger frame was indicative of success. </p>
<p>It was only during the early 19th century that lean and muscular physiques began to be highly coveted. In the space of a few decades, plump bodies came to be seen as slovenly, while lean, athletic or muscular builds were associated with success, self-discipline <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Muscular_Christianity/Uz2clbCnVc4C?hl=en&gbpv=0">and even piety</a>.</p>
<p>Part of this transformation stemmed from a renewed European interest in <a href="https://www.apstylebook.com/ap_stylebook/historical-periods-and-events">ancient Greece</a>. <a href="https://starkcenter.org/igh/igh-v2/igh-v2-n4/igh0204d.pdf">Kinesiologist Jan Todd</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17460260601065953">others</a> have written about the impact that ancient Greek imagery and statuary had on body images. In much the same way that social media has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.09.005">distorted body image</a>, artifacts like the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/acropolis-now-a-museum-for-the-elgin-marbles-1710787.html">Elgin Marbles</a> – a group of sculptures brought to England in the early 1800s whose male figures sport lean and muscular physiques – helped spur interest in male muscularity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A white marble sculpture of two headless male figures with muscular torsos." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385608/original/file-20210222-21-rzauq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385608/original/file-20210222-21-rzauq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385608/original/file-20210222-21-rzauq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385608/original/file-20210222-21-rzauq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385608/original/file-20210222-21-rzauq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385608/original/file-20210222-21-rzauq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385608/original/file-20210222-21-rzauq5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A piece of the Elgin Marbles on display at the British Museum in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Elgin_Marbles_London.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This interest in muscularity deepened as the century progressed. In 1851, a grand commercial and cultural celebration known as the “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Greece_and_Rome_at_the_Crystal_Palace/APIkBwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">Great Exhibition</a>” was hosted in London. Outside the exhibit halls were Grecian statues. Writing in 1858 on the impact those statues had, <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100872714">British physical educationalist George Forrest complained that</a> the British “are apparently devoid of that beautiful series of muscles that run round the entire waist, and show to such advantage in the ancient statues.”</p>
<h2>Projections of military might</h2>
<p>Statues and paintings mattered long before photography came to influence fitness standards in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Equally important, however, was the growth of military gymnastics at the beginning of the century. At the same time that ideal body types for men were changing, so, too, was European society.</p>
<p>As a result of the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the 19th century, several gymnastic programs were created to bolster and strengthen young men’s bodies around Europe. French soldiers <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi-l4mayfbuAhUIHM0KHVRjA38QFjAYegQICxAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapps.dtic.mil%2Fdtic%2Ftr%2Ffulltext%2Fu2%2Fa622014.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2x7ka9j6qhiInx9WbAUctR">were renowned for their physical fitness</a>, both in terms of their ability to march for days on end and move quickly in battle. After many European states suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of Napoleon’s forces, they started to take the health of their troops much more seriously. </p>
<p>Gymnast <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09523369608713957">Friedrich Ludwig Jahn</a>, through his Turner system of calisthenic exercises, was tasked with fortifying Prussia’s military strength. </p>
<p>In France, a Spanish gymnastics instructor named <a href="https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4748159">Don Francisco Amorós y Ondeano</a> was charged with rebuilding the physique and stamina of French troops, while in England a Swiss fitness instructor named <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/950/reviews/1085/chambers-todd-physical-culture-and-body-beautiful-purposive-exercise">P.H. Clias</a> trained the military and the navy during the 1830s. To accommodate the growing European interest in fitness, bigger and bigger gymnasiums started being built across the continent. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People exercise in the high-ceilinged gymnasium." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/381822/original/file-20210201-19-1v6ugu6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mid-19th century drawing of a gymnasium in Paris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://strongmanproject.com/search(resource:11194)?q=Hippolyte%20Triat%27s%20gymnasium">Strongman Project</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soldiers weren’t the only ones participating in these programs. For example, Jahn’s Turner system – which promoted the use of parallel bars, rings and the high bar – became one of the most popular exercise programs of the century among members of the European public <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Gymnastics_a_Transatlantic_Movement/QeaMAQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">and went on to gain a following among Americans</a>. Clias, meanwhile, opened classes for middle- and upper-class men, and Amorós y Ondeano – along with other European gymnastics instructors – was regularly quoted in gymnastics texts published from the 1830s onward.</p>
<h2>The six-pack industry is born</h2>
<p>So the seeds for modern six-pack mania were planted in two ways: First, men started eyeing Greek statues with envy. Then they developed the means to sculpt their bodies in those statues’ images. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.mupress.org/Physical-Culture-and-the-Body-Beautiful-Purposive-Exercise-in-the-Lives-of-American-Women-1800-1870-P369.aspx">writers from the 1830s and 1840s prodded</a> men to aspire to svelte bodies, strong trunks and no excess body fat.</p>
<p>But the obsession with six-packs truly blossomed in the early 1900s. By then, strongmen like <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/35kgt6xq9780252020339.html">Eugen Sandow</a> were able to build off the existing interest in Greek imagery and gymnastics by using photography, cheap mail postage and the new science of nutritional supplements to cash in on the longing for the perfect body.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Eugen Sandow wearing leopard-skin trunks and Classical-style sandals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385610/original/file-20210222-19-z0j4y3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1001&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eugen Sandow poses in an issue of Sandow’s Magazine of Physical Culture, which is considered the first bodybuilding magazine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/%22A_New_Sandow_Pose_%28VII%29%22%2C_Eugen_Sandow_Wellcome_L0035269.jpg">Wellcome Images</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sandow himself sold books, exercise equipment, nutritional supplements, children’s toys, corsets, cigars and cocoa. Sandow, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Perfect_Man/aS2e4Xp392UC?hl=en&gbpv=1">who was once hailed</a> as the “world’s most perfectly developed specimen,” inspired countless men to shed excess “flesh” – the term given for body fat – to show off their abdominals. Abdominals, incidentally, was always the term used at this time. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>It wasn’t until the <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Postwar_America/EXGsBwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=craze+for+six+pack+abs+1990s&pg=PT1470&printsec=frontcover">late 1980s and early 1990s</a> that getting a “six pack” referred not just to cans of beer and started serving as a stand-in for visible abdominal muscles. Searching through <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=six-pack+abs&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csix%20-%20pack%20abs%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2Csix%20-%20pack%20abs%3B%2Cc0*0">Google Ngram</a> shows that from the mid-to-late 1990s the term’s popularity grew exponentially.</p>
<p>“Six-pack abs” quickly became parlance thanks to ingenious marketers determined to sell a range “get fit fast” devices, from <a href="https://bestlifeonline.com/90s-workout-videos/">Abs of Steel</a> to <a href="http://www.earlytorise.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/6minabs_ebook_flat.jpg">6-Minute Abs</a>. </p>
<p>Few have stood the test of time. Yet the longing for the coveted six-pack – as the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/sixpack/">more than 12 million</a> Instagram posts with the #sixpack hashtag can attest – endures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Conor Heffernan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Greek statues, the Napoleonic wars and the advent of photography all played a role.
Conor Heffernan, Assistant Professor of Physical Culture and Sport Studies, The University of Texas at Austin
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/150514
2020-12-10T13:35:33Z
2020-12-10T13:35:33Z
America’s hidden world of handmade pornography
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373426/original/file-20201207-23-hactum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C9%2C3207%2C1719&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soldiers used spent shells and casings to make trench art, like this brass bottle opener that was made during World War II.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Riordan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“To live among the handmade,” philosopher and antiques dealer Leon Rosenstein <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Antiques.html?id=ch_TMfebSRIC">once said</a>, “is to live among the human.” </p>
<p>Well, there’s nothing more human than handmade pornography.</p>
<p>When you hear “pornography,” you might think of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-playboy-skirted-the-anti-porn-crusade-of-the-1950s-49335">Playboy</a> and Penthouse, X-rated movies and internet porn.</p>
<p>But one type that has been largely hidden and forgotten is the pornography people make for themselves. Unlike pornography for profit, handmade pornography is crude and funny and subtle. It, too, contains multitudes. </p>
<p>Over the past decade, I’ve visited archives and museums, met with collectors and antiques dealers, and talked with artists and scholars to reconstruct the ways people across America, from the 1830s to the 1970s, drew, painted, glued, sewed and baked their own pornography. Some altered coins or carved objects from wood, stone and bone. Others wrote stories, made pamphlets and designed comic books.</p>
<p><a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2166.htm">Despite the concerted efforts of law enforcement and social purists</a> to destroy sexual artifacts, thousands of these fascinating objects remain. And now I’m publishing the first history of homemade and handmade pornography. </p>
<p>I’ve titled the book “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo50552747.html">The People’s Porn</a>” because the objects being considered come from a true representation of the American people. As opposed to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/82906/rereading-sex-by-helen-lefkowitz-horowitz/">commercially produced pornography</a> imported first from Europe to early America and then pirated as bootleg editions in major cities, these materials, often made with rudimentary artistic skills, cropped up organically in communities, small and large, across the country. </p>
<h2>From funerals to farms</h2>
<p>Pornography went wherever Americans went – in life and in death, at war and at sea. Men carved wooden pornographic objects at logging camps in the 19th century, and they made pornographic scrimshaw on whaling vessels during the 18th and 19th centuries. Others were inspired to refashion the 19th-century liberty penny that had “ONE CENT” written on the reverse side of the coin. By changing the “E” to a “U,” many Americans had the same idea for rendering the coin obscene. Who knows how many pockets jingled with these pennies over the years? </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A toothpick doubles as a small plastic man with an erection." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371844/original/file-20201129-22-rl1thx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/371844/original/file-20201129-22-rl1thx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371844/original/file-20201129-22-rl1thx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371844/original/file-20201129-22-rl1thx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1171&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371844/original/file-20201129-22-rl1thx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371844/original/file-20201129-22-rl1thx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/371844/original/file-20201129-22-rl1thx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A celluloid toothpick from around the time of World War II.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Riordan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In many handmade objects, sexual gestures stand right behind propriety and erections pop up in staid places. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people made small, carved coffins <a href="https://theconversation.com/memento-mori-remember-that-you-have-to-die-42823">as a form of memento mori</a> that concealed carved figures inside. When you lift a coffin lid, the male figure’s erection pops up. The popular objects were hand-carved, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40581011">hailing from places</a> that still prepared their own dead for burial and still made coffins for neighbors and kinfolk. You can imagine them circulating discreetly at wakes and memorials, provoking laughter even as people mourned. </p>
<p>Pornographic objects also leered about the barnyard, a reminder that America was a largely rural country <a href="https://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/geography/urban_and_rural_areas.html">up until the 1920s</a>. When pornography showed cocks mounting hens, dogs humping each other and pigs acting like swine, it demonstrated that animals remained underfoot and in people’s sexual imaginations. </p>
<p>And when called to war, men made pornographic objects out of spent shells and casings and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/npswapa/gallery/album35.htm">adorned planes with their favorite nudes</a>. </p>
<h2>Postwar pornographic potpourri</h2>
<p>Despite the postwar world’s <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/elaine-tyler-may/homeward-bound/9780465064649/">reputation for cultural conservatism</a>, pornographic objects continued to be made in the home.</p>
<p>Women circulated patterns for pornographic potholders and aprons. Made with a wide variety of fabrics and trimmings, potholders came in pairs, with one side featuring a pop out penis and the other a vulva. Cookies, aprons, hook rugs, embroidery – all traditional women’s crafts – also came in pornographic form. Joined by <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Hardcore_Crafts.html?id=1fVTAAAAMAAJ">explicitly feminist materials in the 1960s and 1970s</a>, women’s creations show that the category of pornography can be much more capacious than you might think.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Red and white potholders feature sly allusions to genitals." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373427/original/file-20201207-23-7fjwvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pornographic potholders tended to come in male and female pairs. This version from the 1960s uses fur for pubic hair.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Riordan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People from all walks of life – young and old, gay and straight, rich and poor, Black and white – made objects that the established order found embarrassing and preferred to ignore. Using commonly available materials, they found a way to express what moved them, what frightened them, what aroused them and what made them laugh.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/how-humans-became-consumers/508700/">Even as consumer culture expanded</a>, pornography continued to be made by hand as people sought to articulate their own visions of sexuality. The mass market eventually took notice of these do-it-yourself productions, whether pornographic or not. By the 1990s, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856510375144">amateur porn</a>” started to flood the market in response to cravings for authenticity.</p>
<p>But you shouldn’t confuse this category of commercialized porn with what people made and continue to make. Handmade and homemade materials can expand our understanding of sexuality. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s ugly. </p>
<p>As much as the world might like to limit sexuality to the realms of the uplifting and transcendent, homemade pornography – in all its incoherent, libidinal, confusing strangeness – reminds us that we are imperfect in body and in mind, subject to pain as well as pleasure, willing to laugh at ourselves and each other, and moved equally by the ridiculous, the violent and the sublime.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Naked wooden figures in a sexual postiion." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373653/original/file-20201208-19-1krubq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some figures, like this one carved circa the 1920s, had multiple points of articulation, allowing the user to move handle back and forth to simulate sex.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Riordan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150514/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Z. Sigel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
One scholar spent a decade studying the ways everyday people drew, carved, glued, sewed and baked their own pornography.
Lisa Z. Sigel, Professor of History, DePaul University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/150563
2020-11-24T08:54:48Z
2020-11-24T08:54:48Z
Mary Wollstonecraft statue: why public art should be collective, commemorative and embrace abstraction
<p>There was much upset when the first statue tribute to the pioneering feminist and author <a href="https://theconversation.com/mary-wollstonecraft-statue-a-provocative-tribute-for-a-radical-woman-149888">Mary Wollstonecraft</a> was unveiled at Newington Green, north London. Created by Maggi Hambling (CBE), the silvered bronze sculpture features a small naked woman emerging from the flames of sacrifice. It has solicited responses like that of The Guardian’s art critic, Rachel Cooke, who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/15/poor-mary-wollstonecraft-reduced-to-a-pippa-doll-with-pubic-hair">entitled her critique</a>: Poor Mary Wollstonecraft – Reduced to a Pippa Doll with Pubic Hair.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.maryonthegreen.org/project.shtml">Over 90% of London’s monuments celebrate men</a>. This statue is one of just a few commemorating women around the capital and, for that, it should be celebrated.</p>
<p>But, pubic critics aside, the statue also opens up some interesting debates about public monument culture and the embrace of more abstract works that are informed by a community rather than the ideas of one artist.</p>
<h2>Creating with communities</h2>
<p>Public sculpture has the potential to lose its resonance quickly. Consider the representational statues of <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/technology/letters/hill.html">Victorian politicians</a> in waistcoats and pocket watches. Many of these men, commemorated in cities across the UK, are largely unknown and their true-to-likeness statues have become “street furniture” with barely any public acknowledgement or recognition.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1326602555720425480"}"></div></p>
<p>Therefore, sculptors need to “future-proof” their representations. There are more successful methods of commemorating an individual, an event or an emotional response than by reproducing them with a sense of fidelity. </p>
<p>Sculptors who want to depict the individuality of the likes of Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf (whose <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/13/virginia-woolf-statue-fundraiser-flooded-with-donations-after-wollstonecraft-controversy">imminent sculpture is now a hot topic</a>), or respond to the Black Lives Matter movement, should involve communities in the creation process. There is then the opportunity to work with collective memory – the shared memories of a community – rather than one person’s vision.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/edward-colston-statue-toppled-how-bristol-came-to-see-the-slave-trader-as-a-hero-and-philanthropist-140271">Edward Colston statue toppled: how Bristol came to see the slave trader as a hero and philanthropist</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>When groups feel the urge to remove sculptures, like those of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/search?q=Edward+Colston+">Edward Colston</a> in Bristol or <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/robert-milligan-statue-slave-trader-london-who-pulled-down-docklands-museum-442517">Robert Milligan</a> in London Docklands, this is because collective ideology is changing. There is an “<a href="http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/84-ICONOCLASH-GB.pdf">iconoclash</a>”, which is where an image – in this case sculpture – is contested or destroyed based on the belief that what it represents is wrong. </p>
<p>Ideas about statues change as society changes. As this happens, different groups contest the meanings behind the sculptures, leading to disagreement about whether they should be kept or taken down. But while ideologies can change, causing this iconoclash, communities retain their collective memories about something, whether they are good or bad.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/r/representational">Representational</a> sculptures (those that strive for realism) pin memories to the particular person depicted and their values. So, the image of Colston reminds us of his slave trading. </p>
<p>When statues are more figurative, their meanings become more multilayered. The sculptures become representative not of the individual but of collective memory, a feeling or moment and are then able to eschew the connection with personal values. </p>
<p>As David Lowenthal, historian and author of <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Past_is_a_Foreign_Country.html?id=jMqsAQZmv5IC">The Past Is a Foreign Country</a> (1985), wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The past is everywhere … Relics, histories, memories suffuse human experience … Whether it is celebrated or rejected, attended to or ignored, the past is omnipresent. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the collective experience is incorporated into the creation and construction process of commemorative sculpture, then the resulting work will have an internal life of relevance to the community.</p>
<h2>A mining community’s Dream</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/10589/dream">Jaume Plensa’s Dream</a>(2009) in St. Helens, Merseyside is a successful example of this process. The sculpture was commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial for Contemporary Art and St. Helen’s Council in 2007 as part of the Channel 4 television participatory public art initiative, <a href="https://www.biennial.com/collaborations/jaume-plensa-dream">The Big Art Project</a>.</p>
<p>Commemorating the industrial history of the area, Dream sits on the site of the former Sutton Manor Colliery. The <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/40489/">project evolved with deep involvement from the miners</a> who had worked on the coalfield, as well as schoolchildren and other community groups.</p>
<p>As a result of working with the community, Plensa discovered that miners carried <a href="https://lancashireminingmuseum.org/2017/08/11/miners-tally-checks/">tallies</a> – identity discs which they held to be very significant – and that they dreamt of light when working below the surface. These key issues led to the design of a luminous white head based on a plinth referencing tallies.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370791/original/file-20201123-19-nwyo00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C25%2C5755%2C4295&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370791/original/file-20201123-19-nwyo00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370791/original/file-20201123-19-nwyo00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370791/original/file-20201123-19-nwyo00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370791/original/file-20201123-19-nwyo00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370791/original/file-20201123-19-nwyo00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370791/original/file-20201123-19-nwyo00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dream is located on the summit of the former Sutton Manor Colliery in St.Helens, Merseyside.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/1311-dream-st-helens-merseyside-uk-1853583745">Pete Stuart/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ex-miners involved in the design process rejected a more literal sculpture, in the form of a miner’s lamp. The stylised dolomite stone and concrete angel aims not to represent anyone but everyone. It does not revive the past by focusing on the specifics of mining, but reflects on the collective memory, community hopes and dreams, and looks forward.</p>
<p>After some <a href="https://www.sthelensstar.co.uk/news/2273251.jaumes-dream-sparks-hot-debate/">initial surprise and backlash</a>, the public received the sculpture well. Former miner and member of the Dream focus group, Gary Conley, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-11034719?print=true">said</a>: “We’ve got an iconic sculpture done by a world-class artist that other major towns and cities would absolutely revere.” </p>
<p>Similarly, Maggi Hambling aimed for universality in her tribute to Wollstonecraft. “She is Everywoman … by elevating an idea, personifying the spirit, rather than depicting the individual.” <a href="https://maryonthegreen.org/docs/MOTG-SculptureLaunch2020.pdf">The commissioning team</a> sought for it to be “a source of debate … a tangible way to share Wollstonecraft’s vision and ideas”. </p>
<p>The statue’s rejection of Wollstonecraft’s features enhances its universality. It reflects all women, their achievements and power. It is a memorial to equality and therefore a compelling monument for us all. Future acts of public commemoration could learn a thing or two from it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Evelyn Roberts does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It might have many critics but the statue tribute to Mary Wollstonecraft succeeds in its abstract commemoration of the feminist. Public sculptures could learn from it
Emma Evelyn Roberts, Associate Dean for Global Engagement and Programme Leader of BA History of Art & Museum Studies, Liverpool John Moores University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149888
2020-11-11T12:55:46Z
2020-11-11T12:55:46Z
Mary Wollstonecraft statue: a provocative tribute for a radical woman
<p>A small naked female figure in silvered bronze emerges out of a swirling mass of organic matter. There is something excitingly unexpected about it all. Although not everyone shares this opinion of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54886813">recently unveiled memorial</a> in north London to the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) by the artist Maggi Hambling CBE.</p>
<p>The statue is a project ten years in the making – but centuries overdue. Wollstonecraft was one of the most defiant and intelligent voices in the period of our nation’s history which is often termed the Enlightenment (1715 – 1789). The arguments she advanced for women’s equality feel familiar today, but they were radical in her age. </p>
<p>Wollstonecraft paid a high personal cost for making her voice heard. <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16199/16199-h/16199-h.htm">Vilified</a> in society as an adulteress and for conceiving a child out of wedlock, her unorthodoxy was condemned by the very society she worked to improve. But her political writings are extraordinary documents, including letters in close dialogue with the leading thinkers and events of the day. </p>
<h2>Everywoman?</h2>
<p>In her new monument, Hambling does not give us a figure of Wollstonecraft, but a vision of “everywoman”. The work feels more of an intervention in <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/statue-wars-blog-post-mary-beard/">debates about monuments</a>, than a monument for a specific person. The sculpture rejects a male tradition of public sculpture, in which the likeness of celebrated men is cast in bronze or carved in marble.</p>
<p>A statement on behalf of the campaign to raise the statue, which took a decade to source the necessary £143,300, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mary-wollstonecraft-statue-north-london-feminism-b1720207.html">described the work’s design</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As opposed to traditional male heroic statuary, the freestanding woman has evolved organically from, is supported by, and does not forget, all her predecessors who advocated, campaigned and sacrificed themselves for women’s emancipation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hambling should be praised for her attempt to break with this tradition but whether this statue is a fitting tribute to Wollstonecraft can be questioned.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of the artist Maggi Hambling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368715/original/file-20201110-15-1fvi14d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368715/original/file-20201110-15-1fvi14d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368715/original/file-20201110-15-1fvi14d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368715/original/file-20201110-15-1fvi14d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368715/original/file-20201110-15-1fvi14d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368715/original/file-20201110-15-1fvi14d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368715/original/file-20201110-15-1fvi14d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The sculpture’s creator Maggi Hambling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggi_Hambling#/media/File:Maggi_Hambling_2006.jpg">StOuen/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, statues don’t represent people, they represent ideas. Ideas of how we choose to see the world. Hambling’s more abstract and representative form perhaps tries to do too much: to celebrate the life and contribution of one woman, whilst celebrating the life and possibilities of all women. </p>
<p>Is such a feat even possible? In attempting to represent every woman, perhaps the statue stands testament to the impossibility of such a task. </p>
<p>The statue’s unveiling saw a swift response of <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/mary-wollstonecraft-naked-sculture-maggi-hambling-b63158.html">female commentators who question the decision</a> to present womankind, and Wollstonecraft’s contribution to our history, through an idealised naked form. <a href="https://www.jojomoyes.com/">Novelist Jojo Moyes</a> said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it would have been nice to commemorate Mary Wollstonecraft with her clothes on […] You don’t see a lot of statues commemorating male political figures without their pants on. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fellow writer <a href="https://www.foyles.co.uk/author-imogen-hermes-gowar">Imogen Hermes Gowar</a> also rejected the “sexy toned female” figure, saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nameless, nude and conventionally attractive is the only way women have ever been acceptable in public sculpture.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While such assessments misconstrue Hambling’s intention for her design, the statue is – in this early moment of its life – too provocative to please every woman. But then again, the same was true of Wollstonecraft’s own reception with her contemporaries. </p>
<h2>Wollstonecraft’s portrait</h2>
<p>It is impossible to know what Wollstonecraft would have made of the statue. She might have experienced sheer shock, perhaps, that the establishment would view her as a fitting subject for such a thing.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft dressed in white looking to the right." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368709/original/file-20201110-23-1q88gli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368709/original/file-20201110-23-1q88gli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368709/original/file-20201110-23-1q88gli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368709/original/file-20201110-23-1q88gli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368709/original/file-20201110-23-1q88gli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368709/original/file-20201110-23-1q88gli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368709/original/file-20201110-23-1q88gli.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/use-this-image/?mkey=mw02603">National Portrait Gallery, London</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hambling’s silvery creation is certainly a far cry from <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02603/Mary-Wollstonecraft">John Opie’s portrait of Wollstonecraft</a> that hangs on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery in London.</p>
<p>A woman of elegant simplicity, you would barely believe you were looking at one of Britain’s most radical writers. Painted when Wollstonecraft was pregnant with her second daughter, Mary, the portrait is a poignant reminder of tragedy around the corner. Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia following the birth. Her daughter would grow up to become <a href="https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/mary-wollstonecraft-mary-shelley-extraordinary-mother-daughter/">a formidable figure</a> in her own right, writing her own monumental work, Frankenstein. </p>
<p>Wollstonecraft was not “every woman”. She was far more outspoken, more rebellious and braver than the average woman of her day. Upon her death, Wollstonecraft’s grieving husband, the author <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/">William Godwin</a>, wrote to his friend, the writer Thomas Holcroft, that “there does not exist her equal in the world”. Hugely individual and brilliantly intellectual, Wollstonecraft was a rarity. It could be fair to say, then, that we are still in need of a statue to capture this.</p>
<h2>Statues as history</h2>
<p>Critics of Hambling’s monument should be reminded that this does not need to be our only statue for Wollstonecraft. True, it has been a long time coming. But Wollstonecraft is a shining beacon in British women’s history – a figure due many statues and acts of remembrance. </p>
<p>Hambling’s statue should remind us rather than distract from the fact that Wollstonecraft made her own final monument in the form of her <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/mary-wollstonecraft-a-vindication-of-the-rights-of-woman">writings</a>. They are well worth reading.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Statue of Millicent Fawcett holding a banner saying 'Courage calls to courage everywhere'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368714/original/file-20201110-15-1mxk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368714/original/file-20201110-15-1mxk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368714/original/file-20201110-15-1mxk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368714/original/file-20201110-15-1mxk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368714/original/file-20201110-15-1mxk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368714/original/file-20201110-15-1mxk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368714/original/file-20201110-15-1mxk77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Millicent Fawcett by Gillian Wearing in Parliament Square Gardens is one of the 10% of statues commemorating women in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-england-january-6th-2019-statue-1276044091">Alan Kean/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, too, are new statistics emerging from the nation’s newfound interest in its public sculpture. Women make up more than 50% of the UK’s population but are the subject of only <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54886813">10% of the statues</a> on London’s streets. </p>
<p>Whatever we may make of Hambling’s statue, today we have one more statue of, and for, women. It is a fact well worth celebrating.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149888/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claudine van Hensbergen currently receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. She has received previous funding from this body, as well as from the following: Arts Council England; British Academy; Chawton House Library; School of Advanced Study, University of London; University of Oxford. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the University and College Union.</span></em></p>
Is the statue a fitting tribute to the fierce feminist writer?
Claudine van Hensbergen, Associate Professor, Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Northumbria University, Newcastle
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