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Zittend
paar
Sitting couple door Lynn Chadwick, ca 1990 Bij het Circustheater in Scheveningen staan een aantal beelden geplaatst ter gelegenheid van het 100 jarig bestaan van het theater in 2004. Er werd toen geschreven over een nieuwe internationale en permanente beeldentuin. Lichaamstaal Het zittende paar van Chadwick heeft een koninklijke uitstraling, niet in de laatste plaats door hun lange mantels of capes die achter hen op de straat gedrapeerd liggen. Bij de series beelden die Chadwick maakte met titels als ‘Watchers’, ‘Strangers’ en ‘Couples’, hebben de mannen vierkante hoofden, de vrouwen driehoekige conterfeitsels. Bij eerdere werken in de serie Couples heeft de vrouw nog ronde welvingen maar ook deze werden later hoekig, abstracter. Chadwick: “The important thing in my figures is
always the attitude – what the figures are expressing through their actual
stance. They talk, as it were, and this is something a lot of people don’t
understand”.
Abstracte
hoofden In een interview
gaf Chadwick aan dat de markante hoofden zijn ontstaan uit de noodzaak tot
een abstracte vorm en de wens vrouw van man te onderscheiden. Citaten
uit een transciptie van interviews uit 1995: Interviewer: What
about the head shapes, how did those evolve? Because you have a sort of,
often a male head and female. Chadwick: Well, just as an
abstract shape, because if I had ... like "The Watchers" are
abstract in many ways, you can look at them as abstract, or you can look at
them as humanistic or whatever, or inhumanistic, you can look at them like
that, if you like. But their face can't be a human face, because it would be
a contradiction, you see. So I have to do a head, which is a sort of
blob, then later, I sort of refined them a bit, and made them into triangles
for, especially for the women, triangles for the women and rectangles for the
men.
Interviewer: Why
do you think that it became those two? One was male and one was female. Chadwick: Well, I don't know. When I had a pair, it
was necessary to contrast them somehow, and the triangle for the woman was quite
good, because it indicated either that she was wearing a hat, or that her
hair was done up in a certain way. But it's just an indication, so as to get
the actual model, the two models together, the male and female one, so that
she wasn't ... not too much smaller than the male, because that didn't seem
right, especially these days, you see, you mustn't have the female thing in
any way reduced in importance, shall we say, physical importance. Interviewer:
Because, actually, with them, you tend to make, you give the females female
characteristics, and leave the male fairly plain, don't you. You don't make
the males male. Chadwick: Well, it's meant to be as male as I want
him to be, I don't have anything sticking up on him to make him look male, I
don't want that. No, just that the, it's the impression of maleness and the
impression of femaleness I want to give. Interviewer: But,
in a sense, the impression of maleness comes from the absence of the female
characteristics you give them. Chadwick: Mmm, possibly. It depends on who's looking
at it. Lynn Chadwick (Engeland, 1914-2003)
Naschrift: april 2014 blijkt het kunstwerk verwijderd Circusplein, Scheveningen, Den Haag Foto’s: maart 2012
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