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Casting the Soul: Antony Gormley’s Sculptures

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The Persistence of the Soul in Literature, Art and Politics

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Abstract

This paper aims at exploring how Antony Gormley, by casting a real body, manages to represent both the depth of the human body and the mystery of the human being. A body cast like Learning to See can be a case in point. The lead sculpture, whose closed eyes seem to be observing the inside of its body, contains air as indicated in the list of materials. Air can symbolise the soul that inhabits the body. The visible and the invisible, materiality and immateriality, the outside and the inside are poetically intertwined in Gormley’s works to breathe life into his statues.

[…] One cannot touch the body without considering the soul […].

Antony Gormley, “Body and Soul,” 1990

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Having the four classical elements symbolically encoded in the meaning of this very simple word, soul, may seem somewhat puerile and vain.” (My translation. Original quotation in French: “On trouvera peut-être puérile et vaine cette symbolique des quatre éléments inscrite dans la langue de ce mot si simple, l’âme.”) In Jean Clair (dir.), L’Âme au Corps. Art et Sciences. 1793–1993 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux/Gallimard, 1993), 57–58.

  2. 2.

    See chapter 3 “Pygmalion’s power” in Ernst H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1960).

  3. 3.

    The phrase “ça a été” used by the French philosopher about photography in Roland Barthes, La chambre claire. Note sur la photographie (Paris: Gallimard, 1980), 119–22.

  4. 4.

    Personal translation.

  5. 5.

    A ready-made is a manufactured object which is designated as a piece of art by the artist. The object was not originally made for an artistic use and its appearance is often not modified by the artist who just signs it. Marcel Duchamp produced the most famous ready-mades, such as Fountain (1917).

  6. 6.

    See photographs of the works in Dimitris Daskalopoulos et al., Sight. Antony Gormley on Delos. Archaeological Site and Museum (Athens: NEON, 2019).

  7. 7.

    As an example, an exhibition was organised by the Musée Rodin in Paris entitled “Rodin—cut-out drawing” from 6 November 2018 to 24 February 2019. The museum possesses 7500 drawings by Auguste Rodin. For scholars, focusing on his drawings is essential to understand Rodin’s sculptures.

  8. 8.

    Gombrich studied how whirls and rivers can create forms. See Ernst H. Gombrich, “The Form of Movement in Water and Air,” in The Heritage of Apelles. Studies in the Art of Renaissance (Londres: Phaidon Press Limited, 1976), 39–56.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Compiègne University of Technology, Compiegne, France

    Coralie Griffon

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  1. Coralie Griffon
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Catholic University of Paris, Paris, France

    Delphine Louis-Dimitrov

  2. Catholic University of Paris, Paris, France

    Estelle Murail

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Griffon, C. (2024). Casting the Soul: Antony Gormley’s Sculptures. In: Louis-Dimitrov, D., Murail, E. (eds) The Persistence of the Soul in Literature, Art and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40934-9_10

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