Friday, March 26, 2021

FALLING MAN

I suppose our town's best known 20th Century visual artist was Ernest Trova, https://etrova.org/home.html. He was, in a sense, a one-trick pony with endless, if creative, variations on a single theme, Falling Man. They are smooth, armless male figures, truncated cleanly at the shoulder like a mannequin. They often pitch forward but sometimes, like here, stand like Egyptian funerary figures. You can look at the web link if you want a precis on the subject. 

The art on display at Laumeier reminds me of the words of the poet Archibald MacLeish that a poem should not mean, but be. The essence here can be a challenge to the viewer.