Critical Mass II, Take 1

Antony Gormley at the Musée Rodin

I wrote a few words a few weeks ago about Antony Gormley’s extraordinary exhibition at the Musée Rodin. Now it’s time to tell you more. This is not the first exhibition to juxtapose the work of Rodin with another artist at this museum. A few years ago two exhibitions were held simultaneously - at the Musée Picasso and the Musée Rodin, linking the two artists. There were some droll connections and some surprising ones, too. It was fun and fascinating to see these two giants together.

This exhibition though is different. The interactions set up by Gormley, of his sculptures and those of Rodin, are visually and intellectually stimulating. (Fig 1) Some of the juxtapositions are playful but they are never funny. Each artist’s work is enhanced by contextualization with the other. Gormley thinks of sculpture as “… an act of faith in life, in its continuity…it has to do with hoping that things will work out, that life will be okay.” And this, “Sculpture does not need shelter, either intellectual or physical, and can stand in the elements, encouraging dialogue between human time, the time of the seasons and the time of geology.” Uncoddled and enduring.

Figure 1. The show stopper, The Garden at Musée Rodin with Gormley figures marching inexorably toward Rodin’s Gates of Hell

Before I tell you about this exhibition, here’s a brief bio. Gormley was born at the half century mark of the previous century, 1950. (Fig 2) The youngest of 7 children, his was a wealthy German/Irish Catholic family (chauffeur, cook). He received the classic education of a wealthy, intelligent, talented boy/man. For secondary school (high school) he went to Ampleforth, the Catholic Eton (featured in several Harry Potter movies). Next, Gormley studied archeology, anthropology and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge. Then, art at St. Martin’s School of Art (now Central St. Martins). Followed by three years of travel in India and Sri Lanka, to study Buddhism. He spent the final three years of 1970s studying sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Arts. Where, lucky fellow, he met another student, Vicken Parsons, who became both his wife and his assistant. Before becoming, in that cliche of cliches, ‘an artist in her own right’ Gormley has said this of Parsons: “For the first 15 years she was my primary assistant. She did all of the body moulding... I think there are a lot of myths that art is made by, usually, lone men...I just feel so lucky and so blessed really, that I have such a strong supporter, and lover, and fellow artist.” Gormley’s work reflects his Catholic upbringing and his Buddhist inclinations. Devoutly Zen.

Figure 2. Gormley, 2011

Gormley has been lucky, in work as well as in love. As a heterosexual, white male, he received major commissions at a time when it was mostly white men in charge of awarding them. His success continues even though his particular constellation of attributes aren’t necessarily the winning ones today.

Among his best known works, which I (and maybe you, too) see on a regular basis as a regular Vera watcher, is The Angel of the North. (Figs 3, 4) Commissioned in 1994, it was completed in 1998 to herald in the new millennium, And it’s not only Vera watchers who see it regularly, but an estimated 33 million people who see it annually. Not by sitting in front of their tellies but by driving by it on the A1 or A167 or seeing it from the their train window, which runs parallel to the A1.

Figure 3. From opening credits for Vera

Figure 4. Angel of the North, Antony Gormley, 1998

The Angel is 66’ tall with a wing span of 177’, wider than a Boeing 757 airplane. It’s made of COR-TEN steel because bronze isn’t strong enough to withstand the 100 mph winds that blow through the area. I’m sure you’re familiar with COR-TEN, the steel that weathers and eventually oxidizes, giving its surface a rusty appearance. My daughter knows the material because the sculptor Richard Serra uses it. I know it because I’m a Steel City girl and the U.S. Steel company which invented it, is headquartered in Pittsburgh.

Why an angel? Accordingly to Gormley, it’s because, “…no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them.” This particular Angel can be interpreted as a reminder of the site’s past - it had been a quarry where miners worked for centuries. Or a reference to the transition from the industrial age to the information age. Or a symbol of hope. There was controversy surrounding the statue at the beginning. The artist himself was reluctant, saying that he didn’t create sculpture for roundabouts. He agreed to accept the commission once he visited the site and understood its history. And of course now it is as famous as Christ the Redeemer in Rio, (Fig 5) the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Figure 5. Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Paul Landowski, 1931

The Angel, like most of Gormley's works, is based on his own body. Gormley says he uses molds of his body because his body is "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside.” Molds of his body are his way “to identify a condition common to all human beings,”

Let me tell you about a few a Gormley projects before taking you to the retrospective at the Musée Rodin. Gormley’s work is often site specific but with modifications, frequently shows up in other contexts, at other venues, too.

‘Field’ from 1991, is an example and an exception. (Figs 6, 7) It was first created in Mexico and has been reproduced in Brazil, Sweden and Liverpool, etc. But Gormley’s body had no role in the work. The first ‘Field,’ in Mexico, was comprised of about 35,000 terracotta figures, between 3 and 10 inches tall, sculpted under Gormley’s supervision, by 60 people, three generations of a family of brick makers in Cholula Mexico. At each venue that Field has been reproduced, Gormley uses local clay and local people from ages 6 to 60. The directions given to the ‘sculptors’ are simple: figurines are to be hand-sized, free standing, with two eyes. The placement of the figures is modified to suit each site, but the figurines are always tightly packed and always looking in the same direction. According to one reviewer, when the figurines are placed walking through a doorway or around a corner, there is a sense that this is an endless horde all marching off to somewhere - like lemmings off a cliff? (Figs 8, 9) I am reminded of the 7000 or so ancient Terracotta Chinese Warriors, (Fig 10) discovered in 1974, which although life-size, are all pointed in the same direction.

Figure 6. American Field, Gormley, Mexico, 1991

Figure 7. Field and Gormley

Figure 8. Asian Field, Antony Gormley

Figure 9. European Field, Antony Gormley

Figure 10. Chinese Warriors, discovered in 1974

I’m also reminded of an exhibition I saw at the Legion of Honor here in San Francisco in 2017, commemorating the 100 year anniversary of Rodin’s death. The sculptor Urs Fischer created some witty juxtapositions with some of Rodin’s sculptures. One piece involved the public and Rodin’s Thinker, which sits in the museum’s courtyard. Fischer invited people to make sculptures in clay. Urs selected some of them to exhibit, a few of them to be cast in bronze. (Fig 11) By inviting participants into the creative process and incorporating their contributions into his work, Fischer referenced Rodin’s own collaborative process with associates and assistants, in the creation of the many Thinkers that populate the world.

Figure 11. Urs Fischer at the Legion of Honor citizen sculptures with Rodin’s Thinker

Then there’s ‘Another Place’ which began on a beach in Germany in 1997 and found a permanent home on an English beach ten years later (after considerable controversy). The piece consists of 100 cast iron figures (6’2” high and 1,430 lbs heavy) originally spread over a 2-mile stretch of beach, all looking out towards the sea. (Figs 12, 13) The naked figures are identical, all modeled on Gormley’s own body. After much discussion, the permanent piece is now spread over slightly less area and 16 of the figures have been moved to less contentious positions. The figures are at the edge of sea and as the tides ebb and flow, the figures disappear and then reappear. Standing in nature, they are at nature’s mercy. They have been corroded by seawater and inhabited by marine animals. 

Figure 12. Another Place, Antony Gormley, 2007, English beach

Figure 13. Another Place, Antony Gormley, English Beach

And then there’s Gormley’s 2007 Event Horizon. Composed of 31 life-size, anatomically correct nude statues based on his own body, 4 in cast iron, 27 in fiberglass. With this installation, Gormley has moved out of the countryside, away the seaside and into major metropolitan areas like London, New York, Sao Paulo and Hong Kong. Gormley describes this work as "...showing solitary figures installed in groups yet retaining their sense of solitude and reflection.” When the piece arrived in New York in 2010, it was the artist’s first public art project in the United States. And it was ambitious, stretching from Union Square to the Empire State Building. The four cast iron statues were placed along pathways and sidewalks of Madison Square Park. (Fig 14) The 27 fiberglass ones were placed on rooftops and parapets of “architecturally noteworthy building” like Daniel Burnham’s Flatiron Building and Cass Gilbert’s New York Life Building. (Figs 15, 16)

Figure 14. Event Horizon, Antony Gormley, Manhattan, NYC

Figure 15. Event Horizon, Antony Gormley, NYC

Figure 16. Event Horizon, Antony Gormley, NYC

According to Gormley’s website, Event Horizon “explores the relationship between the public… and the art object - the human form. Gormley said of the Madison Square site, "Within the condensed environment of Manhattan's topography, the level of tension between the palpable, the perceivable, and the imaginable is heightened because of the density and scale of the buildings.” His hope was that the project would “…encourage people to look around (and) perhaps re-assess one's own position in the world…” Critic Howard Halle said that "Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the … city, Event Horizon creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails.”

A few years ago (2019) Gormley was commissioned by NEON to create a site specific project on the Greek island of Delos. I know NEON. When Ginevra and Nicolas and I were in Athens in 2018, we saw an exhibition sponsored by NEON, in the garden of the British School of Athens. A Greek sculptor, Andreas Lolis who works with marble, sculpted, in that most noble of materials, the most ordinary of objects, battered cardboard boxes, tired industrial plastic garbage bags, broken ladders and abandoned planks of wood. (Figs 17, 18) In marble these ephemeral items are elevated to the ‘status of statues.’

Figure 17. Andreas Lolis, British School of Athens, for NEON

Figure 18. Andreas Lolis, British School of Athens, for NEON

Gormley’s project for NEON was a first for the island of Delos, an island that was inhabited over 5,000 years ago and which hasn’t been inhabited (except by archeologist)s, for the last 2000 years.

Gormley installed 29 sculptures made during the last 20 years, with five new works commissioned by NEON. (Figs 19 - 23)The figures pop up among ruined ancient columns, at the center of an amphitheater, at the water's edge and standing in the sea. Other sculptures were placed amongst the ruined remains of merchant stores. One was displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Delos.

Figure 19. Gormley on Delos

Figure 20. Gormley on Delos, Greece

Figure 21. Gormley on Delos

Figure 22. Gormley on Delos, Greece

Figure 23. Gormley on Delos, Greece

According to NEON’s website, "The works animate the geological and archaeological features” of an island 5 km long and 1.5 km wide, "which has a past filled with myths, rituals, religions, politics, multiculturalism and trade. Its intertwined and contrasting identities, as both holy place and commercial town, combined with its topography and geographical location, made the island a singular and cosmopolitan Hellenistic town.” For Gormley, “In this atmosphere of light there is a feeling of timeliness, of being outside industrial time. Sculpture (here)… provides the invitation to escape mechanized time as we know it."

As I look at Gormley’s work, I am reminded of Christo, and JR, too. (Figs 24, 25, 26) Although one used draping, another uses mostly casts of his own body and the third enlists enlarged and manipulated photographs of real people or places - all have a similar goal - to engage the view, to encourage the viewer to look at familiar things in a new way and by so doing, consider their own place in the natural and man-made world. With all three artists, there is a contemplative side and a call to action. Oops, looks like I’ve run out of space - Gormley’s exhibition at the Musée Rodin next week - promise!

Figure 24. Valley Curtain, Colorado, Christo

Figure 25. The Resilience of Ukraine, Time Magazine, 2022, JR

Figure 26. The Louvre, JR

Copyright © 2024 Beverly Held, Ph.D. All rights reserved

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