PYGMALION FINDS BRAVE LOVE

This very interesting bit of pictorial comment uses the principles of reversal very skillfully. Specifically:

1. The statue in question is “End of the Trail” which is a famous Fraser sculpture of an old slumped, beaten, Indian man on a rack-of-bones horse. It was originally placed at a World Fair on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, fulfilling a comment an old-timer once made to Fraser: “Eventually the American Indian will be pushed into the sea.” Much has been made of this sculpture, which was enormously popular and reproduced in a debased version on ashtrays, lamps, prints, and other trivia. Many people recognize it. The original plaster is now housed in the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City where it is sometimes referred to as the “Indian Pieta,” a commemoration of the death of the Indian who is considered by some to be vanished. (See Brian Dippie’s key book: “The Vanishing Indian.”) Even on today’s Blackfeet reservation people occasionally remark “the old-timers are all gone.”

2. The “story” here is coming to life, using the old Greek myth of Pygmalion, the seed for the play and movie called “My Fair Lady,” in which a sculptor (or Rex Harrison) creates his ideal woman from clay (or a young flower girl like Audrey Hepburn) and then falls in love with her. The gods, taking mercy, bring her to life. There are several variations on this theme over the centuries, but the original story is powerful enough to survive them all. In the cartoon a small version of “End of the Trail” is on a plinth in the background to remind those who have forgotten it.

3. Not only is the Indian brought to life as a vital young male, he clearly fancies the young red-headed sculptor in sideburns and beaded moccasins, which indicate that the artist is open to the Great Romance of the American Indian. Also a fine beaded buckskin shirt from the Plains tribes, possibly Blackfeet (geometric designs), hangs on the wall. Soon this revived Indian will have clothes of a classical and iconic kind.

4. Even more inspired, in the top left corner is the baby (puti or cherub) version of Cupid, another refugee from the Greeks, but wearing the mask of Raven, a trickster from the NW tribes, like Haida or Tlingit.

5. There are two other Indian objects hanging on the wall. On the left, halfway up, is a Plains Indian quiver, bow case, and war shield. On the right lower than the horse’s tail is something else, I think another NW Indian mask, the one that looks like a huge birdhead. Maybe a Thunderbird.

By mixing mythologies this way, the artist makes us look at the essence: creativity, love, and trickiness. The desire to bring an ideal to life by engaging with it, imaging it, making it. The revelations come from mixing stories, even though that’s not advised by scholars.

I have a friend who loves horses. She agonizes over the recent horse-racing stories. I’m sure that when she looks at this picture, she will wonder whether the horse will be brought back to life as well as the rider. In fact, if this were a picture of HER, she’d probably be kissing the horse! We bring to life what we love: velveteen rabbits, boy puppets, and... fill in the blank. But if an artist kisses horses (like Roy Rogers kissing Trigger) does that constitute bestiality, the same way that this male sculptor is practicing homosexuality? Or does any of that stuff count when you’re already in magic land? Who needs labels?

Here’s another reflection from my own knowledge. This original statue was made in plastilene (oil-based clay) and then transferred through the use of molds to plaster and eventually to bronze, which is the way we like our public statuary these days. The fragments of white stuff and the mallet on the ground show that the artist who drew this is indicating that the statue was cut from marble, which was all the rage when this country (USA) was founded, before we turned to bronze. There are many kinds of marble, but most sculptors of the day used a certain kind of marble from a place in Italy where artisans chipped out statues, possibly using a plastilene as a model. So it was only a craftsman who made the statue -- not the exalted artist. Are craftsmen allowed to love something to life? Could there be a good story in the rivalry between a craftsman and the original artist when a statue comes to life, so that the statue has to choose? What would the choice imply?

Italian Carrera marble is pure white, like much plaster, but there are many kinds of marble: green, red, streaked. A sophisticated person can guess where a piece of marble was cut out of the original stone deposit. Plaster also comes in degrees of hardness, though it is lime, which means it is always white unless colored by something. Plaster of Paris, which is actually dug up in Paris, is very soft. When sculptors cast copies to keep, they use much harder plaster, which seems like ceramic. This doesn't seem very relevant.

Knowing an assortment of things like this adds to the richness of meaning in the picture. I wish I knew something about the clever artist: he signs “MCET MMVII”. Google didn’t help. This cartoon was published in “The Walrus,” which is a fairly liberal Canadian magazine, and was sent to me as a tear-out by a fairly conservative (maybe even slightly reactionary) male American friend. Maybe I should say that he’s not gay and that he admires Black Elk, the Sioux syncretist religious thinker.

This is an excellent example of the idea that creativity consists of combining two things previously never juxtaposed. It is also a good example of “bricollage,” the combining of several different parts to create a new whole, which some people suggest as a model for modern Indians: a bit of old, a bit of new, and a bit of something, well, shocking! Something to think about.

I could not think of a “meaning” for the rather realistic wooden platform, stairs, and stepping box with handholds, but they make very good design elements. Sometimes a box is just a box.