Sculpture: Erotikons and Idolons

Leonardo, Vol. 8, pp. 133-135. Pergamon Press 1975. Printed in Great Britain SCULPTURE: EROTIKONS AND IDOLONS Nina Holton* The theme of the sculptures that I shall describe is the theme of encounter, of tenderness, of a unity lost, searched for or found. As the Mexican poetessayist Octavio Paz wrote: ‘For an immense moment we catch a glimpse of our lost unity’ [l]. These two series of sculptures, Erotikons and Idolons, are my visual conceptions of mythic lovers of the distant past. In trying to put into words my thoughts and preoccupations when sculpting these biomorphic objects, I remember Herbert Read’s remark in The Origins o f Form in Art: ‘The greatest enemy of originality is, perhaps, the Zeitgeist, that pervasive spirit in a country which at a particular period of time unconsciously compels artists of all kinds to adopt a common idiom, to relinquish their personal choice of language’ [2], p. 20. A common theme of contemporary art in the U.S.A. and in other countries of the West seems to be derangement and brutalization, which reflects the gloomy pattern of this century with its wars and holocausts. Beyond art, even the science of physics appears to have been open to the theme of disjunction and disintegration, as indicated by the terms that have entered its language, such as radioactive decay, decay of particles, displacement laws, nuclear disintegration, discontinuity, dislocation, indeterminacy, uncertainty, strangeness quantum numbers, negative states, particle annihilation and black holes. It is perhaps because I am looking toward the more utopian or beneficent potentials of human societies that I have tried to find in my sculpture expressions of thejoyous and harmonious elements of life, of the basic forces of integration that provide for me the positive rationale of existence. The visual aspects of my sculptures are not intended to be guided by the current Zeitgeist but they are my response to ideograms and signs, old and new. The sketches that I make for my sculptures (Fig. 1) are almost always directly in clay or Plasteline, which I then rework and refine in wax for casting in bronze. Each sketch starts out in the form of a sign [3,4], which evolves sometimes into 3-dimensional form-a totemic image. * Artist living at 14 Trotting Horse Drive, Lexington, MA 02173, U.S.A. (Received 5 Dec. 1974.) The Erotikons are my interpretation of figures of tenderness and ecstacy (Fig. 2), of encounter and detumescence (Fig. 3). They are erotic but not realistic representations of carnality. These fantasy figures present a viewer with interpretations Fig. 1. Sketcltes in Plasteline. Fig. 2. Left: ‘Erotikon,Z: Possession’, bronze, height 13.5 in., 1972. Right: ‘Erotikon, VZ: Secret’, bronze, height 11 in., 1972. 133 134 Nina Holton of my abstractions of the human form. The embracing couples (Fig. 2) are meant to signify their search for unity, their affirmation of life, of a humanity that defies brutality and breakdown. My beloved is like a gazelle, Behold, there he stands gazing in at the windows, My beloved speaks and says to me: or a young stag. behind our wall, looking through the lattice. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; the rain is over and gone. the time of singing has come. ..[5]. At times the Erotikons reflect a serious, at times a playful, aspect but are meant to be responsive to a sense of the unity of life: ‘The self-oblivion of earthly lovers locked in each others arms, where “each is both” ’ [6]. The Idolons are a set of individual figures intended as heroes or heroines (Fig. 4). They are separate strong entities who stand alone and seem to be in a state of waiting, repose or contemplation. While the Tdolons have primitive, mythic roots, their design has a present-day character. Picasso is reported to have said: ‘When you paint, close your eyes and sing.’ Tn this sense, I close my eyes and let my hand mold the shapes that have impressed themselves on my memory. Sometimes the studio is crowded with panels of sketches of embryonic figures (Fig. I). They seem to come of an older civilization. But at the same time, I find that...