A December photo shoot-Animal Reflections

 One of my favorite places in Des Moines, Iowa is morphing into something else.  I don't know what yet.  But being a reluctant of change, in a certain way, I am grieving.

So that is why I haven't visited the art center in a while.  Because the director of many years has left and I'm afraid the Des Moines Art Center will lose some of it's magic.  Nevertheless, last week, middle of December, no snow, I went and walked around outside it, and took some pictures.

 

 Animal Pyramid

by Bruce Naumann 1990

Des Moines Art Center, commissioned

(click on the picture for full screen view) 

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The sculpture is bronze and has that blue color that bronze turns to when it oxidizes.  This is an eye-catching image.  You see these animals that at first look like deer, stacked up on one another.  It is a surreal, "abstract" work of art.  It must have a political/philosophical message.

The sculpture seems well-placed, somewhat appropriate, a collection of animals out in the wild.  It is at the entrance to a park.  Trees are in the background.  Yellow December grass and leaves are underfoot.  

The overall outline of the artwork is not unlike the bare tree seen behind it in one of my pictures.

The spindly legs have the angular spontaneity of the tree branches.

 

The animals are lined up in a row and stacked on three levels. A very curious image.

 

Since this is Iowa, my immediate assumption was that these were deer.  Iowa is a state of many deer-- and deer hunters.   

 

But I see the artist, Bruce Naumann, calls it Animal Pyramid, so I guess maybe he wants these animals to be generic, free from any label, a universal symbol.

 

 From this view, I am seeing a total of 17 animals.  There are five on the bottom of the pyramid, eight on the second level, and four on top angled in a most peculiar fashion.  Seventeen is an odd number, it's even a prime number with nothing that can divide into it.

I think that calling this a pyramid is somewhat of a stretch, as a pyramid has four sides and a base, and converges at a point at the top.  This conglomeration of animals is the antithesis of simple plane geometry.  Creatures do not consist of straight lines or flat planes.  Straight lines are rare in Nature.

If I were going to try to put an interpretation to this art piece, I would say that these animals are Iowa deer, and are stacked upon one another because that is what we are currently doing to many species of wildlife.  These animals look unnatural because we are driving them from their natural habitat.  They are feeling cramped.  They are living on top of one another because we are forcing them to with our constant land development and destruction of natural wooded areas.

 

 These animals have lost their name and identity.  We no longer appreciate their beauty and uniqueness.  They are called "animal" and we have placed them in an unnatural pyramid.

 

 

 

Note:  A few years back, Iowans were so irritated by the re-occurrence of deer being in the Wrong Place, we decided to control the population by lengthening the deer hunting season.  In fact, we corralled them into a fenced in area and allowed the hunters to shoot them point blank.  The resulting deer meat was reportedly donated to the needy.