“The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.” ― Henry Moore
Reclining Mother and Child, Henry Moore, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
Right at the entrance to the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans is this sculpture by Henry Moore.
I like to compare it to another, more abstract, Henry Moore sculptures… one of my favorites here in Dallas, The Dallas Piece, in front of City Hall.
Henry Moore’s Dallas Piece, barricaded for the Turkey Trot.
During the art event Nasher XChange, a pink arrow was added by Rachel Harrison, who called it Moore to the Point. It was pretty cool, and only temporary.
Rachel Harrison, Moore to the Point, City Hall Plaza (click to enlarge)Amanda Popken, in front of Moore to the Point (click to enlarge)
There is also a small version, a model, of the sculpture at the Nasher. A polished coppery gold, I like to take blurred photos of people walking past it.
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TexasNasher Sculpture Center
Dallas, Texas
“Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want–you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don’t know. I’ve forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn’t matter, so long as you move.”
― Ayn Rand, We the Living
Striding Figure (Rome I), Thomas Houseago, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
“If I am forced to use a sword in combat, I just swing it around like a baseball bat while screaming, at the top of my lungs: “There can be only one!” Which, if done correctly, is surprisingly effective.”
― Sterling Archer, How to Archer: The Ultimate Guide to Espionage and Style and Women and Also Cocktails Ever Written
Diana, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
“I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.” ― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
History of the Conquest, Hank Willis Thomas, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden History of the Conquest, Hank Willis Thomas, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
I enjoyed this sculpture in particular because… well, for one it is funny and cute and a little different. But I loved it because it is a giant snail.
Titanic gastropods have interested me ever since I read that short story, Quest for the “Blank Claverengi” as a child. I’m not alone. Years ago I discovered the story was written by Patricia Highsmith and finding several copies, I wrote about it. Since then, quite a few people have contacted me to say they shared the childhood terror of giant man-eating snails.
Illustration by Jean L. Huens for the Saturday Evening Post. Done for the short story “The Snails,” by Patricia Highsmith.
And now here is a sculpture of a giant snail. With a warrior riding on the back. That’s an angle I never thought of – an army of archers riding into battle, slowly, on the backs of huge armored gastropods. A compelling image – if not a very effective battle strategy.
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Massu II, Johan Creten … in background: The Sun, Ugo Rondinone, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture GardenThe Sun, Ugo Rondinone. Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
Sacrifice III, Lipchitz, Jacques, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
Sacrifice III is one of my favorite sculptures – I have seen it in several places and in different versions.
After his escape from France in 1941, Lipchitz frequently turned to images of ancient Jewish sacrificial ceremonies, rooted in his heritage. Sacrifice III, modeled in 1949 and cast in bronze in 1957, was the final work in the series. The first treatment was a small clay sketch of 1925.
Lipchitz returned to the theme in 1943, and in 1946 began the series of drawings, clay studies, and finished sculptures that led directly to the final version of Sacrifice III. The theme of ritual sacrifice was catalyzed by the fate of the Jews during World War II.
Lipchitz remarked in an interview with Frederick S. Wight in 1961 that he depicted “a certain kind of ritual which we perform on a certain occasion. We are charging some kind of cock with all our sins, and we are offering this animal full of our sins for expiation.”
The 1943 image of this ritual was made “during the darkest moment of Hitler… I charged the animal…with all our sins and I prayed, it is like a real prayer, and afterward I had to sacrifice the cock.” The final sculpture is solemn, laden with the tragedy of the Holocaust.
I went ahead and did some research on this sculpture – primarily to figure out why it depicts Abraham sacrificing a rooster rather than his son, Isaac. In doing this I discovered that the great and famous painter, Modigliani, had done a portrait of Jacques Lipchitz and his wife, Berthe.
I can’t imagine how cool it would be to have a Modigliani portrait of myself.
Amedeo Modigliani. Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz. 1916. Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 54.3 cm. Art Institute of Chicago.
“The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.”
― Auguste Rodin
Monumental Head of Jean d’Aire (from The Burghers of Calais), Auguste Rodin, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
“Fear always accompanies the making of art, generated by the shock of seeing an idea taking its form. A sculpture in the mind is safe and secure–the actual work rarely behaves as intended.”
“Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Karma, Do-Ho Suh, 2011. Korea, Brushed Steel with Stone Base, The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
The most arresting sculpture in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden in New Orleans is Do-Ho Suh’s Karma. A faceted, polished steel man stands with another squatting on his shoulders, with his hands over the man’s eyes, blinding him. Another squats on the squatter’s shoulders, and one on his, so on and so forth. They get a little smaller as they go up and curve a little. The sculpture is only twenty three feet high or so, but it looks like it stretches to infinity.
I discovered it is hard to photograph properly. Especially, since I had ridden my folding bicycle there from Downtown New Orleans I had not brought any extra lenses (no wide-angle) to save weight, space, and danger of damage. I should have known – I have seen it before.
The sculpture looks very different from different angles – so here are a few:
Karma, Do-Ho Suh, 2011. Korea, Brushed Steel with Stone Base, The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture GardenKarma, Do-Ho Suh, 2011. Korea, Brushed Steel with Stone Base, The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture GardenKarma, Do-Ho Suh, 2011. Korea, Brushed Steel with Stone Base, The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture GardenKarma, Do-Ho Suh, 2011. Korea, Brushed Steel with Stone Base, The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel
Liver of Love (detail), Georg Harold, 2013, Lacquered bronze, Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden
I wanted to add the description below because, if for no other reason, it contains the phrase “mythical gigantomachy.”
Georg Herold’s monumental sculptures remind of the mythical gigantomachy, the battles between colossal beings. ‘Liver of Love’ is a highly seductive work of art, which charms the viewer into caressing its surface with their gaze. However, there is little softness in this figure: the tension and unhuman angularity of its limbs suggest the intensity of inner struggle. Indeed, Herold himself spoke of the sculptures’ reticence towards their maker: like a diffident lover, they hesitate to yield in submission.
Herold aims to find essential forms, unbound from existing associations. It is particularly important for him to explore questions volume and corporeal presence, privileging the physical, mistrusting notions of authoritative meaning. He sees a rupture between language and appearance, and favours multiple, non-exclusive readings of his art. Indeed, ‘Liver of Love’ denies any simple reading, deceiving the beholder with a seemingly ‘easy’ title. It is a work full of ambiguity, alluding to a cataclysmic strife, and yet displaying great balance and composure.
Bill Chance 