Clay as earth and flesh

The following comes from the latest ImageUpdate:


"The late sculptor Stephen de Staebler, whose work will be featured in a retrospective at de Young Museum in San Francisco through April 22, is the subject of a beautiful, substantial new monograph from the University of California Press ... de Staebler is ... an important bridge builder—a connector of different worlds. His art reflects the influence of both traditional figurative art and modern Abstract Expressionism. As Timothy Anglin Burgard says in his brilliant introductory essay, de Staebler’s art synthesized ancient Egyptian “frontality,” the figurative poignance of Michelangelo, and the modern angst of Giacometti. Indeed, Burgard’s essay is aptly entitled “Humanist Sculptor in an Existentialist Age.” As a boy, de Staebler fell in love with clay while playing in the rivers of his native Indiana. For him, clay was both earth and flesh—beautiful but fragile and evanescent. His sculptures (which also include works in bronze) dramatize the paradoxes of the flesh by giving us figures who have been eroded by time and suffering but who nonetheless radiate with dignity. From an early age, de Staebler experienced mortality and physical suffering in his family, so his work always resonates with a heartbreaking pathos that is not the least bit sentimental. While he often claimed to be outside formal religious institutions, de Staebler was deeply influenced by the Western heritage of Christian art. He wrote a thesis on St. Francis of Assisi—that most earthy of saints—and found endless mystery in the figure of the Virgin Mary and angels (though his angels are enigmatic and formidable, not cute)."


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Henryk Górecki - Concerto for piano and strings.