and then there were eight

This should look familiar (eh, Clayton?). I find this image striking; their reverent bodies, shoulder bent to carry the weight, but so used to the weight are these eight that their bodies aren't strained so much as subsumed. Our eyes are probably (at least in their minds) supposed to float up the striking figure above, a king, our heads, though looking up, still below his awesome body; thus, though standing, we bodily are lower, bowed in upward stare. However, we notice the eight men first, their draped and worn cloaks, then their shoulders bent, then the heavy weight, and somewhere in between or after noticing they carry something and that something might be their sacred burden, their king, we notice their shields. Anonymous in their burden, in their combined subservience, yet a shield, a crest to distinguish who this wilted body is. Not a face, a symbol.

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I find this sculpture striking also because of writing and the weight of silence we often feel when confronting the page, canvas, or stone. I think it’s easy for us to assume the artist, poet, painter has a set plan; knows already the curves, the bend of body, the deep reds of oil brushstrokes. The whitespace is formidable. But I find it harder still when there is so much to be written, so much to say, but the words are not yet words. Not yet flesh.