{"id":8080,"date":"2014-09-15T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T04:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=8080"},"modified":"2014-09-15T00:03:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T04:03:10","slug":"listening-to-lipchitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2014\/09\/listening-to-lipchitz\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening to Lipchitz"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<\/a>
Jacques Lipchitz, sculptor. “Government of the People,” 1976. (\u00a9 Association for Public Art)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jacques<\/a>
Jacques Lipchitz, sculptor. “The Spirit of Enterprise,” 1960. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ask Jacques Lipchitz<\/a> to share his views on art. His response is curious. \u201cYou can\u2019t verbalize art. I think when you start to do that you lose exactly your impact, because art is born from darkness, and if you start to clarify it, it goes away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ask The Master about “freedom of expression” and he takes us down another interesting rabbit hole: \u201cThe important thing, you see, is to acquire some kind of a freedom in expression. And if you know something it becomes very difficult. Freedom is not given to us.\u00a0 We have to conquer it, we have to conquer it by fighting, by working, very hard, and then a little bit more freedom comes every time. You know you are more free\u2026 and you have to learn how to be free. You have to let everything what is unknown, because what we know is very little\u2026 So these unknown forces you have to let them work for you. And, first of all, you have to be able to catch them. You know that\u2019s the technique you learn. Things are coming, coming, you don\u2019t know what it is, but you have to have a net to catch them. Then you have is see what it is, what you can use. You understand? That\u2019s freedom for an artist. Because he works with things which are absolutely mysterious for him, unknown.\u00a0 What he knows is very little.\u201d<\/p>\n

And when an artist does<\/em> know something? “Rodin was telling that you have to know anatomy, but when you are working you have to forget about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s not easy to forget. \u00a0If you learn it, it\u2019s with you. But relative freedom can be conquered; that comes only with age.\u00a0 So as soon as you have freedom, everything changes for you. All your views are changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of his life, Lipchitz created a few monumental artworks. \u201cGovernment of the People\u201d is one of them, just across from City Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the architect Kling from Philadelphia who came to me and proposed to me this job. You know In Philadelphia I was very well known because the museum had a lot of pieces of mine, the Barnes collection, etc. and so I was somehow\u2026the chosen son\u2026I was the pet sculptor of Philadelphia. And so they came to me and of course I was very happy to do the job, because it\u2019s a very responsible job. Kling built an annex to the municipal building, a modern\u2026with a big plaza and he wanted to have me to make this sculpture for the plaza. It\u2019s a very difficult thing because so many styles of arch are around. You know, the Municipal building of Philadelphia\u2026is very interesting architecture, end of 19th<\/sup> century French architecture, a mixture of all these styles. And beside this you have this church with a steeple. And then you have a kind of a Masonic Temple, which is a mixture of all kinds of styles. It\u2019s very different styles all around\u2026”<\/p>\n

Lipchitz died three years before the installation of \u201cGovernment of the People\u201d in 1976. But his recorded voice, Penny Bach tells us<\/a>, echoed through the plaza at its dedication. \u201cI believe in the capacities and potentialities of the human being,” proclaimed the sculptor, “and I would like the exalt them in every one of my works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, that and any of Lipchitz\u2019s many other quips, quotes, anecdotes and advice can be heard, thanks to the internet. But what we\u2019d really like<\/i> to hear are the sculptor\u2019s words bouncing, once again, off the facades of Center City, when and where they will really<\/em> mean something. As luck would have it, the opportunity isn\u2019t very far off. In a few months, when the new conservation project<\/a> to clean and wax the \u201cGovernment of the People\u201d is complete, why not<\/em> invite Lipchitz to its re-dedication? He never was at a loss for words worth listening to. And more than forty years after his death, he still<\/em> isn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ask Jacques Lipchitz to share his views on art. His response is curious. \u201cYou can\u2019t verbalize art. I think when you start to do that you lose exactly your impact, because art is born from darkness, and if you start to clarify it, it goes away.\u201d Ask The Master about “freedom of expression” and he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}