This work appropriates the image of the Discobolus, (the discus thrower), a Roman copy of a bronze statue, circa 450 B.C.E. by the reknowned Greek sculptor Myron. I made this work for a friend with the same name.
The word torso comes from the Latin word meaning: to twist, (thus our word “torsion”.) This is the first of a series of headless Torsi based upon images of statue fragments. The series is subtitled The Desecrations, and this piece represents the desecration of desire.
The original bronze of Myron probably represented a victor in the Olympic games. What makes his work remarkable is that this figure twists in space, when most Hellenic sculptures heretofore were figures whose bodies were oriented in one direction, and occupied a discreet pure volume of space. |
Myron’s sculpture is like a “freeze-frame” of an action, we can guess the position of the body before, and after the discus is thrown. This sculpture was a seminal idea, any figure sculpted after this work, and posed in a front-oriented, discreet volume, couldn’t help but look old-fashioned in comparison.
Hommage to Myron uses images of Apollo, Hyacinth, hyacinth flowers, yellow roses, and St. Hyacinth. Apollo, the Greek god of light, truth, and beauty loved a Spartan prince named Hyacinthus. Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, also fell in love with Hyacinthus, and grew jealous. One day when Apollo was showing the prince how to throw the discus, Zephyrus blew the wind so hard that it caused the discus to strike the prince’s head, killing him. From the blood, hyacinth flowers sprung forth. |
Where I live in Houston is not far from a site called San Jacinto, (Jacinto is Hyacinth in Spanish) where Texas won its war of Independence from Mexico. The advance of the “Texians” caught the Mexican general Santa Anna unawares, busy as he was being seduced by a mulatto woman, (the Yellow Rose of Texas), who was loyal to the Texan side.
There were two saints named Hyacinth, the first was martyred during the reign of Valerian, around 258 C.E., and was entombed with another martyr St. Protus. The second St. Hyacinth was Polish, and called the apostle of the North, and proselytized throughout Poland, Scandinavia, and Russia, and died in 1257. |
