What is a sculpture? What is a frieze? What is a monument?
Let's talk about Sabin Howard's upcoming Washington DC monument to The Great War, "A Soldier's Journey."
You probably haven’t heard of Sabin Howard. He’s an iconoclast. An upstart within the 21st century art world. A man who snubs every convention known and held dear by art students, buyers, teachers and docents alike. Sabin Howard does not believe that the artist should be the centre of his own work. Sabin Howard does not believe art should “make you think,” or “stress you out,” or “address the political with the personal.” Sabin Howard is a classical realist.
Classical realism has a storied history which began in the Hellenistic Greek tradition, bolstered and imitated first by the Romans and then the great Italian Renaissance masters, who shared it with enlightenment Europe and eventually, America. Classical realism isn’t “realistic,” exactly- it’s the heroic interpretation of reality. I like to reference things you have already seen, so in this case think Leonardo Davinci’s “David,” bigger than a real person, somehow real but ideal at the same time. Or “The Dying Gaul,” a Roman marble copy of an older Greek sculpture. In a kind of turducken of heoric sculpture, we’re looking at Renaissance Florentines copying 3rd century Romans copying a 500 year older statue they saw in Pergamon.
This copying tradition continued, along with refinements in materials and techniques right up until the early 20th century, around the invention of the camera. I could argue, I think convincingly, that the camera displaced the desire for classical realism in both painting and sculpture- what’s the need for huge, realistic renditions of our history when we have photographs (practically the real thing… well, for a while anyways, but that’s a different essay for a different time.)
I’m showing you 2 kinds of sculpture- one that is free standing and one that is stuck in the wall. Frieze sculpture is a word that refers to “nearly” 3 dimensional sculptures that are embedded in architectural elements. In the case of the Temple of Zeus at Pergamon, sculptural elements adorn the walls along a staircase, the oversized figures reaching out toward the passers-by, art invading real people space.
You will see it also in the pediments (the triangle topper on the entrance) of churches and public buildings, such as St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg or the entrance to the Capitol building in Washington DC.
Q&A: How is Frieze different from Bas Relief?
In two ways- depth of sculpting and also architectural location. “Bas Relief” is shallow (think fancy tile work with geometric or floral design slightly raised up from the surface.) “Frieze” is nearly 3 dimensional, with the sculptural elements seeming to reach out from the wall. Bas Relief can be almost anywhere as an architectural element or decoration (the edge of a fireplace, door frames, flooring, etc.) Frieze is part of a structural element (a pediment, the lintel topping a row of columns, an arch or a wall.)
Classical realism survived for a longer time in the United States in the form of public buildings- courthouses, libraries, places of lawmaking and the like. We like our public buildings to resemble the European enlightenment buildings. Enlightenment Europeans liked their public buildings to resemble the Roman forums. Romans fancied copying the style of the Hellenist Greeks… you see where I’m going here?
Public monuments used to follow this trend too. Paris’s famous arch looks like the Arch of Titus, looks like Hadrian’s arch.
In our most modern of modern times, however, the classical and realistic way of looking back has fallen out of favour almost completely. Recently our national parks have chosen to install more “modern” monumental sculpture. Works such as Lei Yixin’s “Stone of Hope” (Martin Luther King, Jr.,) the The Pentagon Memorial design (9-11,) developed by Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman through a kind of design by committee submission scheme and the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, designed by architect Maya Lin all have their own virtues, but they can hardly be called Classical.
Despite the large volume of war memorials, one notable absence in Washington DC has been a monument to The Great War. I will call it what Kurt Vonnegut Jr. called it, out of respect for the dead, but I do mean World War 1. It’s true that there are smaller fountains, memorials and free standing sculptures around the city, honouring divisions, individuals and the residents of DC themselves, but nothing like we have for other large conflicts. In 2016 the National Park Service selected Sabin Howard to tell the story of The Great War. So now we have returned to the hero of our story.
Howard is an American, raised in New York and Italy (which you can hear in his words if you listen carefully) and did not begin his life as an artist until he was 19 years old. He sees the Renaissance masters as his masters, seeking to tell stories in the classical way, using live models and lost wax bronze casting. He was recently featured on the Econtalk podcast (https://www.econtalk.org/how-do-you-capture-the-tragedy-of-war-with-sabin-howard/) where he seems keenly aware that he is a rebel against modern art sensibility. He deliberately chooses to elevate the subject over the artist, the descriptive over the impressionist… and yet he insists he is doing “everything the modern art philosophy has asked of him.” That is, he has successfully subverted the art world’s expectations, revolting against the currently favoured construction materials and execution techniques. He has told his own story by refusing to tell it at all. It is the story of a self taught, classically driven craftsman who desires to return public art to our roots. To acknowledge the modern without throwing away the craftsmanship of our forbearers.
He couldn’t have given the bastards a bigger middle finger if he had sculpted one out of chicken shit. No, instead of “innovating” in that tired modern art way so many of us were told to do in college, which turns us all into cruddy carbon copies of "revolutionary,” angsty white drunks from the 1950s, Sabin Howard has sculpted a classical frieze.
Stunning, nearly 60 feet long, containing 38 separate life sized figures, “A Soldier’s Journey” traces the journey of a soldier from life before war to returning home (with a plot twist at the end which he will reveal to you in the podcast- which I highly suggest you listen to!) He rented period clothing and equipment for live models used in sketch and small clay sculpting. The work was scaled up and a group of sculptors helped convert the clay into wax, then to moulds and finally to bronze cast. It took years of hard work and it’s worth it.
The last parts of the final monument were delivered earlier this summer. The Monument will unveil this Friday, September 13th, in an evening ceremony.
PS- Realism Today has a great photo gallery: https://realismtoday.com/realism-sculpture-soldiers-journey-memorial/