Negatives of a body

Woke up to pictures of this horror in the paper. Tribune story and photo.

What does this evoke in you? Robert Klein Engler:

What Lynn Ridgeway and her neighbors don’t understand is that “beautiful” has nothing to do with public sculpture anymore. Public sculpture gave up any consideration of beauty over a generation ago. Magdalena Abakanowicz says “the figures are hollowed out and missing arms and heads because they are negatives of a body, like bark fallen off a tree.” What’s beautiful about that?

The American poet Robert Frost remarked once that poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom. Modern sculpture, however, begins in materials and ends in concepts. Now, there is hardly any delight, wisdom, or beauty left in what remains standing.

A public sculpture should convey some nobility of the human spirit. There is none here.