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拍品專文
Elisabeth Frink’s Seated Man II (1986) occupies a unique place within both her career and the trajectory of Post-War British sculpture. Combining monumentality with striking accords of human vulnerability, it is simultaneously imposing and unexpectedly beautiful. Rejecting both the idealised female nude – deeply ingrained into Western art history and utilised by predecessors such as Henry Moore, Auguste Rodin and even Barbara Hepworth – as well as the abstract, non-figurative tendencies that began to dominate art of the 1980s, Frink’s Seated Man II is in many ways counter-cultural. Rather than turn away from the human figure, she invests a renewed vitality into it. This stocky, solitary male form is unheroic and yet profound in his weight, able to channel all the stoicism and vulnerability of – not just the human condition – but the Post-War human condition: one of introspection, mortality and endurance.
Such was Frink’s commitment to portrayals of the male figure that the Walking Madonna, found in the Cathedral Close at Salisbury, is the sole female image in her entire oeuvre. Where she found the female body encumbered by romanticism, objectification and even sexualisation, the male form allowed her to transcend gender, becoming a versatile vehicle for depictions of mankind. Frink was able to express vitality, existentialism and beauty – as well as human propensity for violence – without the burden of historical and cultural associations.
Importantly, anatomical accuracy was of little significance to Frink. Though her seated figure is a long way from abstract, his skin is overly textured and his hands sculpted with little adherence to three-dimensional realism. Likewise, his eyes and mouth are overly-pronounced, and little effort has been made to replicate hair. This, as Frink would explain herself just four years prior to completion of Seated Man, was a question of outer vs inner energy: "What I have tried to make clear in my sculpture … is the way in which feeling, expression, even force and energy, should be below the surface … the outer skin may define more or less conventional features, but with a second look should indicate the complex strains of nerve-endings and the anticipatory reflexes of something that is about to happen" - Dame Elisabeth Frink
Interestingly, Frink’s acute sensitivity to surface extended to the patination of her bronzes. As she once remarked to the present work’s previous owner, ‘it is identical to the one in the garden here, which is cast number three, except that it is darker and is in fact the right colour … it has a much richer surface’ (private correspondence, 9 January 1987). Her meticulous attention to tonal depth reveals her own belief that colour itself could heighten a sculpture’s brooding presence, amplifying the dormant energy contained beneath the outer membrane.
It was the early 1980s when Frink first began experimenting with the archetype of the seated male nude, having developed it from drawings of a young man begun in 1981. Her first attempt, Seated Man, was commissioned by Mr and Mrs Leo A. Daly III, Washington. It marked a rather drastic move away from the thin, sinewy athletic figures that had come to define her earlier work. Here, both stillness and softness, power and malevolence, are implicit. The young man is relaxed and yet his virility, especially if he were to stand up, could well cause danger. This notion of contained energy – something dormant, bubbling from within, which threatens to break through the surface – has been of continual fascination to Frink:
"Somebody who is entirely composed, shall we say. Entirely. Quite the opposite of passive. In fact, somebody who can be extraordinarily emotional, but one senses they are composed. They’ve got it in there and can unleash it if they like. I try to translate this into my figures. Something slightly caged in"
- Dame Elisabeth Frink
Seated Man II arrived several years later. He embodies this same duality but in his inquisitive eyes and upwards gaze we receive a more thoughtful, brooding and contemplative figure. Such a dichotomy of emotional states, as Frink delineates above, is perhaps what she presents to us as the ultimate human condition: the capacity to endure and hold back impulse; to act with a delicate balance of fragility and strength. Sculpture, of course, in its mass and weight, allows for latent force to be felt through pose, form and texture, and Frink exploits this quality to striking effect in the present work.
Never working with models, Frink instead liked to draw inspiration from those closest to her. Her sculptures often take on the facial characteristics of loved ones, or even her own. The model for both Seated Man and Seated Man II is likely to have been her husband, Alex Csáky. As with her large heads of the 1980s, both sculptures bear a distinct resemblance to his physiognomy. In the searching glance and grounded density there thus lingers the trace of a personal bond, rendering Frink’s masterpiece not just monumental and timelessly human, but also one infused with emotional power, love and memory. In this way, the sculpture captures Frink’s unique contribution to Modern British art: a reaffirmation of the human figure as a vehicle for existential truth and the plight of mankind at a moment when much of contemporary sculpture had turned away from it.
Such was Frink’s commitment to portrayals of the male figure that the Walking Madonna, found in the Cathedral Close at Salisbury, is the sole female image in her entire oeuvre. Where she found the female body encumbered by romanticism, objectification and even sexualisation, the male form allowed her to transcend gender, becoming a versatile vehicle for depictions of mankind. Frink was able to express vitality, existentialism and beauty – as well as human propensity for violence – without the burden of historical and cultural associations.
Importantly, anatomical accuracy was of little significance to Frink. Though her seated figure is a long way from abstract, his skin is overly textured and his hands sculpted with little adherence to three-dimensional realism. Likewise, his eyes and mouth are overly-pronounced, and little effort has been made to replicate hair. This, as Frink would explain herself just four years prior to completion of Seated Man, was a question of outer vs inner energy: "What I have tried to make clear in my sculpture … is the way in which feeling, expression, even force and energy, should be below the surface … the outer skin may define more or less conventional features, but with a second look should indicate the complex strains of nerve-endings and the anticipatory reflexes of something that is about to happen" - Dame Elisabeth Frink
Interestingly, Frink’s acute sensitivity to surface extended to the patination of her bronzes. As she once remarked to the present work’s previous owner, ‘it is identical to the one in the garden here, which is cast number three, except that it is darker and is in fact the right colour … it has a much richer surface’ (private correspondence, 9 January 1987). Her meticulous attention to tonal depth reveals her own belief that colour itself could heighten a sculpture’s brooding presence, amplifying the dormant energy contained beneath the outer membrane.
It was the early 1980s when Frink first began experimenting with the archetype of the seated male nude, having developed it from drawings of a young man begun in 1981. Her first attempt, Seated Man, was commissioned by Mr and Mrs Leo A. Daly III, Washington. It marked a rather drastic move away from the thin, sinewy athletic figures that had come to define her earlier work. Here, both stillness and softness, power and malevolence, are implicit. The young man is relaxed and yet his virility, especially if he were to stand up, could well cause danger. This notion of contained energy – something dormant, bubbling from within, which threatens to break through the surface – has been of continual fascination to Frink:
"Somebody who is entirely composed, shall we say. Entirely. Quite the opposite of passive. In fact, somebody who can be extraordinarily emotional, but one senses they are composed. They’ve got it in there and can unleash it if they like. I try to translate this into my figures. Something slightly caged in"
- Dame Elisabeth Frink
Seated Man II arrived several years later. He embodies this same duality but in his inquisitive eyes and upwards gaze we receive a more thoughtful, brooding and contemplative figure. Such a dichotomy of emotional states, as Frink delineates above, is perhaps what she presents to us as the ultimate human condition: the capacity to endure and hold back impulse; to act with a delicate balance of fragility and strength. Sculpture, of course, in its mass and weight, allows for latent force to be felt through pose, form and texture, and Frink exploits this quality to striking effect in the present work.
Never working with models, Frink instead liked to draw inspiration from those closest to her. Her sculptures often take on the facial characteristics of loved ones, or even her own. The model for both Seated Man and Seated Man II is likely to have been her husband, Alex Csáky. As with her large heads of the 1980s, both sculptures bear a distinct resemblance to his physiognomy. In the searching glance and grounded density there thus lingers the trace of a personal bond, rendering Frink’s masterpiece not just monumental and timelessly human, but also one infused with emotional power, love and memory. In this way, the sculpture captures Frink’s unique contribution to Modern British art: a reaffirmation of the human figure as a vehicle for existential truth and the plight of mankind at a moment when much of contemporary sculpture had turned away from it.