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Uniquely expressive of life, feeling, and energy is the freehand drawing by John Hurtig. A notable characteristic of the image is its projection of a figure that seems of monumental scale and yet also somehow alive. Tenderness, poise, power, and accommodation are expressed in an object containing cues of both animate an inanimate three-dimensional forms. The primary unit for the development of the image is a loop that sets up a rhythmic pattern suggesting energy, action, and growth. The loop itself suggests the scaly hides of certain creatures. Hints about kinds of living things referred to in the image are supplied by shapes, gestures, and relationships that speak of the animal world but at the same time have links with human sympathy and understanding. The manner in which the enormous form accommodates itself to and sustains itself upon the land suggests the shaping of architecture to the physical forms of a terrain of the kind seen in the work of Wright. For me the feelings most vividly evoked by this work are not easily expressed in words. They seem to combine poignancy, pity, and seemingly contradictory feelings of swelling power and helplessness. On the one hand the design expresses a welling up of life and emotions, reminding one of a great bird in a mating show; a supple skirt and armlike appendage are symbiotic accommodation to the ground; the “head” seems to be making an amiable, tender, nodding gesture; delicate and perfect rhythms open and close along the surface of the object. But on the other hand the object seemingly sentient and understanding is blind; it is tied to the ground; it is primordial and undeveloped, like a great slug. |
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These jarring contrasts, keenly distressing to the mind, produce an unusual matrix of poignant feelings. |
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