"Pygmalion II" will be on display for the first time at our October 5 show at JAS.
The thing about myths is people tell the same series of events very differently. How we interpret a myth says more about us than it does about the myth. You can tell the same story a lot of ways and they're all true. Or as true as any myth ever gets.
Broadly speaking, the myth of Pygmalion was that a sculptor (Pygmalion) fell in love with one of his own pieces and was so taken by it that he petitioned Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to bring it to life. Which she did. The popular understanding of this myth these days comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and in his version Pygmalion is too good for all mortal women so he has to sculpt his own. But to me, it's a story of hard work and personal investment and the desperation we feel when we've given our best and we're worried it's not enough.
This is my telling of Pygmalion.
The sculptor Pygmalion had a vision. In his mind's eye he beheld the language of perfection. He saw the rise of a collarbone under the skin of the throat. He saw the graceful curve of a spine. Within a single fingertip there was a gesture encompassing ten thousand words of prosaic expression, surpassing them all.
Having been shown the language of the universe, the perfect system of structure and foundation upon which all reality rests, he set about the task of speaking it.
From the first light of the sun over the horizon to the last rays of its descent beyond the edge of the earth, every day for ten years he labored. Each night he dreamed of the same perfect vision and each morning he confronted the previous day's efforts and knew despair.
One night, wandering the streets, he found himself at the temple of Aphrodite, goddess of love. On the steps he stopped, regarding her statue and as he did so, he became overtaken with a rage such as he had never known. Ten years of his life he had devoted to her aspect, ten years of labors he had performed for love and devotion. Ten years and all he had to show for it was grey hair and a pile of misshapen pieces of marble. He screamed then. Face tilted to the stars, he howled in wordless powerless agony, for he could do nothing else. And when he could scream no longer, when his throat was raw and his breath spent, he sank to his knees on the marble steps of the temple and begged. Unable to speak, he turned his entire being into a single act of desperate supplication. And there he remained, kneeling and soul shattered.
The morning light woke him and he returned to his studio, which was as he had left it. As he had every day for the past ten years, he took his seat next to the statue. As he had every day for the past ten years, he picked up his chisel and mallet and summoned in his mind's eye the image of divine perfection he sought to recreate. But this morning, for the first time, his mind was empty. Where before he had held an all-consuming vision of his work and what it could have been, he now saw only a void.
The hammer and chisel dropped from his grasp. Face buried in his hands, he wept. He wept for the sunsets he had missed, for the friends he'd lost. He wept for the absence of his dreams, for the emptiness where perfection used to be. And most of all he wept for the self he'd become. The self that had given everything it had to give only to discover that its everything wasn't enough.
Thus consumed, he did not hear the faint rustle of fabric or the scratch of marble moving against marble. But he could not miss the feeling of a warm hand on his shoulder.
Raising his eyes, he beheld his statue and his statue gazed back. The eyes he'd dismissed as dull and lifeless were now very much alive, their brows somehow elegant and strong instead of harsh. The mouth he'd carved countless times, never to his own satisfaction, the mouth that he'd cursed as a rough, misshapen mass was transformed in life, embodying the godly perfection he'd sought. And as he stared admiring at that perfect mouth, one corner turned up in an intimate, knowing smile.
He stood, and offered her his hand, and together they walked out of the studio. Watching from the steps of her temple, Aphrodite laughed in joy.
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