Friday, July 5, 2013

Two figures embraced


In my seventieth year, I am attempting subjects that I dare not contemplate in my youth.  Those who toil upon the forge of art are fortunate: as the body grows older, the spirit gets younger.  Creativity, by its very definition, is something different to what has gone before.  I now want to give my sculpture the accidental freedom of my watercolours and to explore the interaction of two figures embraced.  

Working from the nude figure demands passion tempered with integrity and daring tempered with restraint.   These demands become even more challenging when two figures are interlocked in an embrace, for then the element of sex enters the picture.

The following quotations are relevant to the problem at hand.

Sex somewhat remains a forbidden theme, a kind of barrier that provokes sheer hesitation when it comes to represent it and most artists do not have the will or the courage to go beyond was is acceptable in the eyes of the public and even in theirs. (Adrian Darmon)
No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling....The desire to grasp and be united with another human is so fundamental a part of our nature that our judgement of what is known as 'pure form' is inevitably influenced by it, and one of the difficulties of the nude as a subject for art is that these instincts cannot be hidden. (Sir Kenneth Clark)

The picture shows one of my preliminary sketches for a sculpture of two figures embraced.


No comments:

Post a Comment