#2 Chrysler Treasures - Man
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Second in a series of caches highlighting the art of Norfolk's Chrysler Museum, One Memorial Place, Norfolk, VA 23510. The Chrysler Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, Sunday from Noon to 5 pm. Admission is Free. Website: www.chrysler.org. This statue may be seen in Gallery 221 at the museum.
"Man" is a larger than life, standing bronze sculpture of a nude man by Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935). The statue's posture is contrapposto with all its weight on the left leg. Lachaise’s monumental statue asserts the primal importance of the human body in an age of machines, wars & economic unrest. Based on studies of ancient Greek & Egyptian sculpture, the artist simplifies the nude body while conveying its strength through bulging muscles and exaggerated proportions. This work commands us to think about our bodies and the space they occupy. Its massive hands suggest we consider the creative potential of our own fingertips.
In an era when European & American sculpture was increasingly defined by the tenets of abstraction, Gaston Lachaise devoted himself unapologetically to the human form, producing a succession of powerfully conceived nude figures in stone and bronze that reinvigorated the sculptural traditions of Rodin & Maillol.
Born in France, Lachaise received his first instruction from his father, a Parisian cabinetmaker, and then continued his training in modeling & carving at the École des Beaux-Arts. Precociously talented, by age 16 he was already exhibiting his work at the Salon. Around 1903 Lachaise met Isabel Nagle, a Canadian-American woman, who quickly became the love of his life & his chief artistic muse.
A brief stint with jeweler & glassmaker René Lalique earned Lachaise enough money to join Nagle in Boston. In 1906 he sailed for the United States, never to return to France. In America Lachaise continued his sculptural apprenticeship, working in Boston under Henry Hudson Kitson. It was not until 1918, with his first one-man exhibition in New York, that he began to enjoy widespread success. The centerpiece of this show, the life-sized Standing Woman, captivated the critics, who responded warmly to the figure's revolutionary blend of robust physicality & spiritual calm. The sculpture, an idealized homage to Nagel, whom Lachaise had wed the year before, gave rise to a number of increasingly erotic female nudes. Inspired by Isabel, Lachaise's sculptures of the female figure often seemed effortlessly achieved. His exploration of the male nude, however, was more labored.
Nevertheless, between 1927 & 1933 Lachaise explored the expressive power of the male form in 6 major sculptures devoted to the single, standing nude figure. By far the largest & most commanding of these is "Man", which Lachaise began work on in 1930.
The sculpture, a free-standing colossus nearly 9 feet high, depicts an exaggeratedly muscular man with gigantic hands & massive feet rooted firmly in the earth, a kind of primordial, universal male embodying calm, confidence, & strength.
Lachaise finished modeling "Man" in 1934 & included his initial plaster cast in an important retrospective of his work mounted in January 1935 by the Museum of Modern Art. The MoMA retrospective, the first ever accorded a living sculptor, marked Lachaise as a major American modernist, a mature master at the height of his creative powers.
In October 1935 Lachaise was hospitalized & diagnosed with leukemia. Within days he was dead. He was 53. The first bronze version of "Man", the Chrysler sculpture, was cast in early 1938 by the Brooklyn foundry E. Gargani and Sons. Sources suggest that Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., himself commissioned the cast; in any case, Chrysler quickly acquired the work & installed it in the garden at King's Point, his family's Long Island estate. This statue today is at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Gallery 221. A second bronze cast was purchased soon after by Nelson Rockefeller. That work is today at Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate near Tarrytown, New York.
Other caches in this series include:
Chrysler Treasures #1 - The Norfolk Mace (GC7C965) Located in Gallery 208
Chrysler Treasures #2 - Man (GC7EAZX) Located in Gallery 221
Chrysler Treasures # 3 - Angel Appearing to Shepherds (GC7EC96) Located in Gallery 211
Chrysler Treasures # 4 - The Neophyte (GC7ECR7) Located in Gallery 214
Chrysler Treasures # 5 - The Wounded Indian (GC7EMPZ) Located in Gallery 212
Chrysler Treasures # 6 - Picasso (GC3B4KQ) Located in Gallery 219
Chrysler Treasures # 9 - Veronese (GC7EYA3) Located in Gallery 204
Chrysler Treasures #10 - The Last Judgement (GC7EYE5) Located in Gallery 202
Chrysler Treasures #11 - The Vegetable Vendor (GC7EZM5) Located in Gallery 207
Chrysler Treasures #12 - James Baldwin (GC7F3HN) Located in Gallery 222
Chrysler Treasures #13 - Ganymede and the Eagle (GC7F4BK) Located in Gallery 208
Chrysler Treasures #14 - Renoir (GC7F3PJ) Located in Gallery 217
Chrysler Treasures #15 - Samurai Armor (GC7F6M8) Located in Gallery 106
Chrysler Treasures #16 - Tiffany Glass (GC7F5WY) Located in Gallery 116
Chrysler Treasures #18 - Naga Buddha (redux) (GC8A8PE) Located in Gallery 107
Chrysler Treasures #19 - Sarcophagus (redux) (GC8A8X8) Located in Gallery 109
Chrysler Treasures # 21 - Libenksy and Brychtova (GC7QFM0) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 22 - Abstract Expressionism (GC7QG86) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 23 - Hamlet Robot (GC7QG8E) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 24 - Here Kitty, kitty (GC89AWG)
Chrysler Treasures # 25 - Bernini's Bust of Christ (GC8RZB5) in Gallery 205
Chrysler Treasures # 26 - MacPherson and MacDonald (GC8ZXF5) in Gallery 218
Chrysler Treasures # 27 - Karen Lamonte (GC8ZY3Q) in Gallery 108
Chrysler Treasures # 28 - Amor Forgiven (GC90M9V) in Galley 216
Chrysler Treasures # 29 - Standing Warrior (GC90VFT) in Gallery 105
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