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)

 

Wikipedia

 

 

 

                                          Naschrift: april 2014 blijkt het kunstwerk verwijderd

 

 

 


 

Circusplein, Scheveningen, Den Haag

 

Foto’s:  maart 2012

 

 

 

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