Wednesday, June 16, 2004

I was wondering about the use of death masks in public sculpture today. There are plenty of death masks around, from Tutenkhamon to Alfred Hitchcock, but most of them are stashed away in museums or galleries. They’re not really public art as I define it. But how have the masks (or even life masks) been used in public sculpture? JQA Ward, a pretty famous 19th century sculptor and one who snatched more than his fair share of public commissions, was a friend of Horace Greeley’s, and used the death mask he made for his statue in NYC is 1890. Lincoln, of course, had two life masks done- one just before he left for the White House, and one after he’d been in office for a few years, just before the assassination. The difference in them is tragic. But the first, made by a an artist by the name of Volk, has been used for losts of public work, including Daniel Chester French’s massive memorial in the Lincoln Memorial. But they’ve been used by other than maters. An assembly line kind of a guy by the name of Alfons Pelzer, who worked for the Mullins Foundry in the midwest, made the original for a batch of bronzes. He used the mask which was on loan at the time from the Federal Government. And George Washington himself, who sat for casting of face, arms and torso for the French sculptor Houdon, can be found in sites from Newport, RI to Los Angeles as more and more groups ponied up for copies of the original. But the most heart-wrenching death mask is that of Jan Palach in Prague. It’s likely that very few remember this 25 year old who set himself on fire to protest the occupation of his country by Soviet troops in 1969. He was a hero and many credit him with stirring the fires of revolution not only in his own country but in others as well by his act of self-sacrifice. A casting of his death mask is now on the Charles University philosophy building in Prague.  (Photo from the fragmentsweb.org  website) 1:19:24 PM    comment []

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