April 2012

Paul Manship (1885-1966) built his reputation and his exquisitely crafted sculpture on this principle.  This St. Paul-born artist, one of the most famous sculptors of the early 20th century, took his subject matter from classical and historical sources, giving viewers noble subjects and idealized forms that inspired and assured them.  The world is solid and stable in Manship’s view, a cosmos where mythology and time-honored themes can still resonate with the 20th-century human experience.

Time and the Fates Sundial is one such sculpture, created in 1938 as a model for a mammoth plaster sculpture commissioned for the 1939 New York World’s Fair.  Here, Manship presents the Tree of Life as the base of the sundial with the three Fates spinning the web of life beneath it.  Leading the way is Clotho, “the spinner,” who represents the future and spins the thread that makes up our lives.  Behind her is Lachesis, “the measurer,” who symbolizes the present and measures the life as it passes through her hands.  Seated at the rear below withering branches is Atropos, who ultimately cuts the thread at death.  Rather than a depressing finale, the sculpture assures the viewer that life is part of a universal cycle and is built upon idealistic notions of classical beauty and cosmological certainty.

Time and the Fates Sundial is featured in the exhibition Our Treasures: Highlights from the Minnesota Museum of American Art, on view at the Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College in Northfield through May 8.  It will also be discussed in depth at a seminar on Paul Manship at Carleton College on Saturday, April 14, from 10 a.m. to noon.  Click here for more information on Paul Manship, the seminar, and the exhibition.