Demeter and Persephone
Archetypes in Sculpture
Kore (bronze)
Both in general and in specifics, contemporary American sculptor
Anita Huffington can be called a figurative artist. Her work, though
personally abstracted, presents clearly recognizable subject matter, and
that subject, much more often than not, is the human torso. While she also
may use the forms of animals, birds, and fish as an impetus, her preferred
image is the lithe female nude. Her graceful, reductive figures represent
no particular individual. These are symbols that represent human
experience.
Demeter
She offers for consideration woman, not a woman, but woman as the
source of life primordial, regenerating, and as the embodiment of the
feminine mythic persona. In recent years, since the death of her own
daughter, she has found herself deeply moved and inspired by the ancient
story of Demeter and Persephone (or Kore). In the Greek myth, Persephone,
the nubile daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, fertility, and
marriage, is abducted by Hades, lord of the underworld, who carries the
young woman away to his subterranean realm. The grieving Demeter withdraws
fruitfulness from the earth (winter). Zeus, the king of the gods,
intercedes and Persephone is allowed to return for a period each year
(spring).
Huffington finds in the Demeter-Persephone tale an exposition on
the mystical bond between mothers and daughters, on grief and the loss of
innocence, and on the pain and joy of existence.
The artist agrees with Swiss psychologist C.G Jung’s observation on this
same myth:
Demeter and Kore, mother and daughter, extend the feminine consciousness
upwards and downwards - and widen out the narrowly conscious mind bound
in space and time, giving it intimations of greater and more comprehensive
per sonality which has a share in the eternal course of things.
Huffington sees contemporary relevance for these twentieth century
Korai. She is drawn to the allegory of the seasons and the idea of continu
ance in this myth an ancient story of transcendence through insight
that has relevance for all times.
Ceres
Stylistically too, for reserve and simplicity Huffington’s figures
seem rooted in classical antiquity and to heroic forms of the ancient Near
East. Moreover, reminiscent of much Greek, Roman, high gothic,
renaissance, and baroque figural contrap posto, these figures often appear
on the verge of some elegant movement or gesture, turning slightly or
shifting weight. Such interest in supple line and implied motion
undoubtedly is also a con sequence of the artist’s early career as a
dancer studying with the famed Martha Graham company. In fact, she states
plainly: My preoccupation with movement, balance, the tensions of the
body is an outgrowth of my experience as a dancer?’
The influence of dance extends as well to more subjective elements
of form and composition:
to disciplined yet facile technical rendering and to the decidedly
smooth-flowing play of lights and shadows across the various figures. As
though design impulses and basic materials can be magi cally
choreographed, Huffington seeks empathy with the very bronze or stone
itself. "I find the form in the stone;' she declares, "or the stone for
the form in my mind, and I pursue the image until it evolves from my
intimate relationship with the stone. In naming and defining we divide the
artist from nature:' she continues. "But in the sculpture where is that
separation? Where does the stone leave off and the artist begin?"
Huffington is acutely sensitive to the natural colors, textures, and most
especially the patterns and grains in her media, often accommodating those
features to her composition and, one feels certain, just as often
conversely adjusting her concept for the finished piece to the material's
inherent design qualities.
Kore
In the 1950s and 60s Huffington became good friends with and moved
in the circle of numerous major artists of the abstract-expressionist
group, including Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Larry
Rivers. Living in Manhattan, she later completed her bachelor's and
master's degrees from the City College of New York. In 1977 she moved with
her husband to a remote log home and studio near the Ozark Mountain town
of Winslow, Arkansas. Continuing her work there, with
frequent trips to her galleries in New York and other large cities,
Huffington gradually became established as an important emerging
contemporary sculptor. Leaving the nation's principal urban cultural
center has been no detriment to her work, as friends and fellow
avant-garde artists might have feared. Quite the contrary, free from the
pace and distraction of the big city, she has been remarkably inventive
and highly productive.
Life in the mountains and woods over the thirteen years since her
transplanting seems unceasingly to invigorate her spirit, expand her
vision, and renew her communion with Earth's vital force. "Living in the
woods in close touch with nature," Huffington explains, "has deepened my
awareness of the wordless source, the interdependence of all things?'
Wheat and Flower Offerings made by Anita and others in Greece at Eleusis
-- the
ancient center of Demeter and Kore worship in ancient times
