Notes on some sculptures

First Loss

Bronze

‘Erster Verlust’

– from Opus 68 by Robert Schuman

Schumann’s madness like Van Gogh’s is of far less interest than his capacity for empathy.

He knew human weakness “like the back of his hand”, in which he developed an injury that no physician could categorize, let alone treat. And he drank. And he had wretched years of loss and longing, fighting a bitter and protracted lawsuit for the opportunity to be with his beloved Clara.

His ability to disclose his feelings in music was extraordinary, and the lighter side of the sensitivity and empathy, is the portraits that he could improvise at the piano, of his friends. “Erster Verlust” is a little children’s piece of miraculous simplicity and directness.

Equally remarkable to me was the pose my model assumed on being asked to express loss.

We changed it very little. And to those people who have said “that’s exactly how I felt after losing…” I can only suppose that if this sculpture seems to truthfully express loss in a way that can be identified with, then my model helped me achieve that truth. In a sense she was also the artist, channelling her emotions, and our mutual empathy, sculptor, model and viewer, allow such feelings and ideas to be shared.

The Revolutionary

Bronze

Opus 10, Number 12 by Frederic Chopin

Chopin has been my idol since a young age. In the world of harmony and piano composition he was a revolutionary. The 24 Etudes Opus 10 and Opus 25 are admired for their simultaneous combination of the most useful pedagogical material with their sublime artistic value. They are perhaps sculptural in the way that the detail, often an extraordinary filigree of finger passage-work is so perfectly fitted to the thematic material. Indeed Chopin’s visual sense has been explored in a fascinating article by Douglas Hofstadter who shows how the different patterns that arise out of certain figurations, were carefully arranged in Chopin’s manuscripts to maximise their visual order and appeal.

The theme of the Revolutionary Etude sounds very impatient, with short-winded pleas and complaints, sobs and retorts. Perhaps it is about Chopin himself. His whole life was a wretched battle with respiratory disease, and his cage of a body. I tried, by the position of the arms, to suggest a cage of a man’s own making.

In every cry of every man,

In every infant’s cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind forg’d manacles I hear.

from London, Songs of Experience, William Blake

The First Refugee

Bronze

It is of interest that the first work that Rodin exhibited in the Paris Salon under his own name was said by him to contain the essence of all his subsequent work.

It is a portrait of a man with a broken nose, known only as ‘portrait of M.B.’, but it is not far-fetched to consider it his homage to Michelangelo Buonarotti, the most famous M.B. with a broken nose. Rodin’s model was actually an elderly labourer named M. Bibi, inviting answerable musings about the role of the unconscious in Rodin’s choice of subject, name and model. I might have assumed he was fully aware of his references, had I not been astonished to have a friend point out how much my little ‘refugee’ looks like Rodin’s ‘Eve’. And of course I’d seen it in books, but it was always one to flip past, not in the same league as, for example, the Burghers of Calais. But there it is: an unconscious influence. So she’s now the ‘first refugee’ and a tiny part of my huge debt to Rodin is partially paid.

This was one of the first pieces I ever made. She is emerging, perhaps from water or mist, and hasn’t yet found her feet. The theme of the expulsion is of such resonance, because the eviction from Eden is punishment.

Refugees.

This piece was created in response to their sufferings.

A refugee is not merely someone who has lost their world, but has been rejected. She is turning not in suffering, but in shame.

As Music and Silence Meet

Bronze

Hands, give him all the measure of my love

Surer than any word.

Eyes, be deep pools of truth, where he

May see a thought more whole than constancy.

Heart, in his keeping, be at rest and leave

As music and silence meet and both are heard.

Ursula Vaughan Williams

Hands, Eyes, and Heart. Four Last Songs

Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams

I first came across these words many years before I became a sculptor, and I think of them as a touchstone for the ideas about art and music developed by Glenn Gould.

In his many writings, Gould talks about the damaging effects both for the individual and society at large of aggression and competitiveness. While it is easy to see in contemporary rock music the strong streak of egotism and aggression, Gould points out that it is a feature of some of the music of most periods.

Gould’s hypersensitivity on this point was actually extreme, but his reasoning was sound and uncompromisingly moral.

He believed that music could do evil as well as good, and that evil was done by any form of musical composition or performance experience that was competitive, adversarial or egotistical.

Gould was highly critical of the cult of virtuoso, the concerto as a showpiece of soloist versus orchestra, the competitions by which musicians established their fame, and public performance in general. He also believed that the standards of perfection of public performance were dangerously inhibiting to musicians’ freedom of expression; and that success itself encouraged a performer to maintain a limited and petrified repertoire through endless repetition.

Artists of all kinds may face this problem. If art is treated solely as a ‘commodity’, then the ‘consistency’ of the product might be seen as a virtue. Identical washing machines should all perform well for about the same length of time. Consistency is a virtue when that consistency is the consistency of high quality. But consistency in the sense of sameness or repetitiveness is simply …dull.

An artist who consciously strives for a style, in this latter sense of recognisable sameness, may achieve a certain financial success that then condemns him or her to endlessly churning out an almost identical product. To me this is a living version of the hell imagined by Nietzsche of endless return: the endless repetition of the same life.

Alternatively an artist can explore whatever styles, materials, subject matter, methods, themes, and media that stimulates or interests him or her.

Consistency or rather coherence may emerge in any case, as a true reflection of the richness of that person’s personality and experience.

Glenn Gould further believed that music could be experienced through recorded media, in a state of repose, and in which the listener, far from being a submissive recipient of the god-like virtuoso as authority, could engage in the creative process.

By subtly modifying or selecting the recorded product’s content, (ever easier with the new technologies that Gould found liberating), and through repeated listening, the work comes to be known very well.

By the appreciation of the music at this deep level, the listener becomes spiritually uplifted.

The performer would be liberated by being able to control his or her musical production, with the aid of technology that dispensed with the problem of nerves, and which  permitted retakes until the artistic goal was truly achieved.

Gould identified these pinnacles of music-making and listening, as a true spiritual ecstasy or rapture.

The music of the composer can in this way meet the silence of the listener.

The silent rapture of the listener, to spiritually uplifting music, is the first subject of this particular sculpture. The counter subject is that unexpected beauty can be found in the simplest pose, if the pose and its cause are inseparable: she would only tilt her head in this way when listening intensely to music.

Gymnopedie

Bronze

The Three Gymnopedies (1898) of Erik Satie are admired for their serenity and neo-classicism.

“Satie’s habit of writing his pieces in groups of three was not just a mannerism. It took the place in his art of dramatic development, and was part of his peculiarly sculpturesque views of music.

When we pass from the first to the second Gymnopedie or from second to third Gnossienne we do not feel that we are passing from one object to another.

It is as though we were to move slowly around a piece of sculpture, and examine it from a point of view which, while presenting a different and possibly less interesting silhouette to our eyes is of equal importance to our appreciation of the work as a plastic whole.

It does not matter which way you walk around the statue and it does not matter in which order you play the Three Gymnopedies”

Constant Lambert, Music Ho! 1934

Summer

Bronze

I would hope this sculpture evokes that sense of complete relaxation, and stillness, pleasing tiredness after exertion, or comforting warmth, that most of us experience in summer.

How to create the ‘right’ pose in sculpture? I think this is one of the most interesting questions for a figurative sculptor. Rodin thought and wrote quite a lot about it, and adopted very specific methods of working in order to catch a glimpse of a pose he could use. Apparently he could afford to have several models working in his studio at one time, some at rest and others wandering around. When something caught his eye, the model was told to ‘freeze’ and work would begin.

I sometimes incorporate this ‘discovery’ approach in my own methods of working with models, and I present them with an idea, an emotion or title, and suggest they imagine or remember that feeling. Sometimes this works beautifully, but just as often we get nowhere. I try suggesting pose after pose after pose, until, as in this case, I turned around and said “take a rest”. One time after I’d stopped, as I turned back, the model was in this very pose and I asked her:

-” That’s wonderful, perfect, that’s IT!… by the way what are you thinking?”

-“Oh, just “What the bloody hell can I do that will please this guy?”

That is how this discovery was made.

Spring

Bronze

This is my first full life-size figure sculpture. It was commenced on the 31st July, 2001, the original completed in wax, and cast in bronze in November and December 2001.

The traditional apprenticeship in sculpture culminated in the completion of a life-size work. This piece therefore represents a significant milestone in my practice as an artist.

It was created in interesting circumstances, as I was endeavouring to create a work that embodies certain ideas of beauty and grace, combined as often before with references to music and the art of the past.

The project, although difficult, was an essentially joyful experience. I had the enthusiastic and unswerving commitment of my model, Jennifer, a native of New York, and sculptor Mark Henry, who has cast this and most of my other sculptures.

It also coincided with the development of many friendships. In the middle of this happy time, the extraordinary events of September 11, 2001 and their immediate aftermath unfolded.

Passion

Marble, Carrara ordinario

At the risk of inhibiting equally valid interpretations of this piece, I explain it as an image recollecting my internal conflict, of striving and restraint, referring to my own confusion in trying to find my path. That confusion was resolved by an epiphany.

I rather like, (but make no pretence to thinking I really understand) the works of Friedrich Nietzsche.

The subtitle to ‘Ecce Homo’, his peculiar autobiography, is ‘How one becomes what one is’, and in the foreword he closes with a quote from ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’:

“One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil.

…You respect me; but what if one day your respect should tumble? Take care that a falling statue does not strike you dead!”

-Good advice…

“…You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account.

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have denied me will I return to you…”

-Clears it all up…

Epiphany

Bronze

From the Greek: manifestation of a god, and more particularly, the manifestation of the Christian God to the Magi, representatives of all humanity.

Colloquially, and for me, it was a revelation of a non-religious kind, a sudden unexpected realization.

It was my sudden and unexpected discovery of my vocation as a sculptor, after my interest was accidentally piqued by the film ‘Camille Claudel,’ and I thought I might try my hand at it, late in 1989.

Such a  metaphor as being ‘struck by lightning’ no longer seems so disproportionate, and I gained some insight into people who have a religious epiphany.

Essentially a truth is being experienced, rather than merely understood, and this is what makes the realization real.

Art and Music

The idea of pairing musical works with artistic works is not new. The most famous example is of course Moussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, where each movement evokes one of a series of paintings, and the overall cycle is given coherence by a ‘promenade’, a musical theme suggesting a walk from one picture to the next.

It is not uncommon for musical pieces to have picturesque titles, and in the Romantic period the practice proliferated.

Detailed programmes were suggested for instrumental works, sometimes with absurd results. Many pieces were titled despite rather than by their composers, and some composers, Chopin in particular, remonstrated against the practice.

My own wish in pairing the sculptures with musical items is to extend rather than restrict the viewers’ responses. The connection between the specific works and their musical items, vary from the highly specific and deeply felt, to the merely allusive.

Associations of all kinds in various arts proliferate endlessly. The three famous pieces titled ‘Gymnopedie’, by Erik Satie, have always evoked for me the grace and beauty of the body in movement. Constant Lambert’s likening of these three pieces to three different views of the same sculpture was a delightful discovery, but how wonderful and surprising to find, as I did recently, that Gymnopedie actually means ‘naked youth’.

Musicians in particular, have a sense of historical continuity and a reverence for their predecessors. For example in a book by pianist Philip, there are diagrams like genealogies of the connections between teachers and pupils of the piano.

The language used in describing these many interlocking traditions borders on the religious.

And why not? I’ve learnt that Tony Gould’s personal artistic evolution was shaped by a true epiphany: the unexpected encounter with Beethoven’s last piano sonatas as interpreted by Claudio Arrau.

One of Arrau’s pupils was the great Australian pianist Ronald Farren-Price.

Arrau was a pupil of a student of Franz Liszt, the pupil of Czerny…, himself the pupil of Beethoven… Liszt describes a meeting with Beethoven, in which the master laid his hands on him as in benediction.

And of course, homage is paid to such masters especially on their passing.

It is also good to pay homage to the living!

Tony Gould, Ronald Farren-Price and my father have all inspired me in different ways, so I hope I have successfully expressed my regard in these pieces.

Ronald Farren-Price

Bronze

Ronald Farren-Price is well known throughout Australia and internationally, as a sensitive and accomplished pianist, a masterful interpreter of Beethoven and Chopin, and a tireless educator.

I was fortunate to study with him for two years, and I particularly admire him for his serious and dedicated approach to a piano student such as myself, with so little promise as a pianist! I think he shares the belief that the enrichment of an amateur’s cultural understanding, is just as important as the refinement of the aspiring professional.

Portraiture offers two great challenges for the artist:

Firstly to represent a person in such a way that the subject, and people who know him or her well, recognise the portrait has faithful.

Secondly, to indicate a personality through the portrait, that can be easily and correctly deduced by those who know nothing of the person.

Saint John the Baptist

Wax and stainless steel

Tony Gould is a fabulous improviser and jazz pianist, a champion of young musicians, and Dean of the Victorian College of the Arts.

With Stephen Jay Gould and Glenn Gould, he is also one of the ‘Three Goulds’, outshining the ‘Three Tenors’ in my personal pantheon.

Tony has kindly modelled for me, and permitted me to present him as the prophet Saint John the Baptist, still gazing on the infinite.

Not religious myself, but interested in how faith shapes our lives, I have always admired Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German theologian, martyred by the Nazis.

Bonhoeffer wrote:

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves … grace without discipleship…. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know…. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”

The Cost of Discipleship

Joseph Freidin

Bronze

My father came from a family who were already refugees when he was born in Danzig, Russian Jews who fled the Communist Revolution, and later fled again from Nazi Europe.

He spent several years on a book-length memoir of his family’s travails, paying homage to those who guided the family to safety in Australia.

As a surgeon, in his decades of service to his patients, he has bettered or indeed saved the lives of thousands of people, and he has been an inspiration to generations of medical students and surgical trainees.