The Power of Sculpture

Not long ago I sent out an email to over 200 people asking them to respond to the question: Has a piece of art ever changed you in what you feel is a significant fashion? This is my response as promised.




In the fall of 1980 I was studying theater at the University of Texas in Austin. One day when I had a bit of time I wandered into the art building. In the center of a spacious, starkly white room was a quite large plaster copy of an ancient roman sculpture which is itself a copy in marble of an early Hellenistic piece from 220-230 B.C. thought to be done in bronze and lost in time and space. Of course I did not know all this then. At first I thought it was a rather smooth, white nude of a man reclining; but I found myself drawn to something about it.


It was early afternoon and I was quite alone in this vast space. About 15’ from the piece was a bench. Sitting I studied the figure. Here was a man, a warrior mortally wounded, his sword dropped at his side as he struggles to rise against the pain of the fatal wound in his side. I sat motionless taking in every detail until a moment came when I imagined that I could see movement—the right hand pressing down for support, the left leg drawing up to gain a footing on the shield on which he has collapsed, his face a mask of concentration and refusal to give in to the pain, the knowledge of imminent death.




The illusion was so real I rose from the bench feeling a strange desire to reach out and help him. Tears slipped down my face and more so when I finally saw the title of the piece, A Dying Gaul. He would never rise. But the artist had caught him forever on the razor edge countless soldiers over eons have found themselves—between death and the urge to heed the call of duty and honor.


Never again would I listen to a report of bombs exploding and statistics of the wounded and the dead as if such events were not a part of my world. They may wear Kevlar and desert fatigues, drive humvees instead of walk or ride horses, but they are the Dying Gaul who in his nudity seems to stand for every man who has walked a battlefield, whether in ancient Greece, on the steppes of the vast plains of Russia, the frozen forests of Europe, the rolling depths of oceans and the vastness of the skies, the jungles of Vietnam or the desolate wastes and urban horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan.


He is my husband, my son, my brother, my father, my friend and now my sister. I must rise and give succor and seek ways to ensure not only that he comes home to me, but that I build a world in which she never has to leave.  Gail Mangham


Won't you send to gailm@theartistpath.org your life changing experiences with art and your notions on the function of the artist in society?  I will post them to this blog.