Making Abraham Lincoln
Anew - and in Bronze.
An inspired collaboration has
been taking shape at President Lincoln’s Cottage
as part of the lead up to the Lincoln Bicentennial celebration.
View the slideshow >>
View The New York Times article >>
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Washington developer
Robert H. Smith is generously
sponsoring a new sculpture memorializing Lincoln’s
association with this important site to be completed before
the end of 2008.
Mr. Smith’s proposal to place a new Lincoln sculpture
at the recently restored summer cottage, that Lincoln
occupied between 1862-64, will add great significance
to StudioEIS’ historical works and has challenged
the studio to find another dimension to the man who sat
so formally for Brady’s camera.
In 1862 President Lincoln, heeding the advice of close
advisors, made for higher ground - about three miles from
the White House, where a slightly cooler summer could
be had and he could find retreat from the White House,
the heat and the war. Lincoln’s retreat also produced
what is considered one of the defining
documents of his presidency
– The Emancipation Proclamation - now thought to
have been originally drafted during this period at the
Cottage.
Developing an image of Lincoln and his trusted circuit
horse was a little bit daunting: designing a suitable
illustrative story that would eventually become the blueprint
for this new sculpture would have to be found to make
this new bronze sculpture a worthwhile endeavor. Making
a new image of Lincoln, precisely
because he holds such an extraordinary place in American
popular memory, was harder than one might have thought.
No President, with the possible exceptions of Washington
and JFK, has been as indelibly etched in our visual conscious-unconscious
minds as Lincoln.
Designing this new sculpture has meant careful research
resulting in a synthesis
of history and art where small
revelations can still be had - even in the well-trodden
area of classical sculpting. Our conversations with curators
and historians at Ford’s
Theater, The National Museum of American History, The
Illinois Historical Society,
and several Lincoln Museums
along with equine &
saddlery experts have contributed
greatly to our understanding of Lincoln, and in the course
of our study, we have also measured some of Lincoln’s
clothing including his extraordinary and iconic top hat,
examined the original Volk life-mask and casts of his
hands, and looked at every photograph made of him. Funnily
enough, many believed that a photograph of Lincoln existed
showing him riding a horse, which, as it turned out, was
not the case.
I began the quest for an image by considering the fact
that Lincoln was photographed in 66
separate sittings demonstrating
measured forbearance, and a willingness to take advantage
of photography’s potential political usefulness.
These formal images we have come to know him by suggest
only a side or one window into the
Lincoln personality, and they
are consistent with most photographs made in formal sittings
during that period. It became easier to find the hint
of a new image for the sculpture when considering those
facts. Our initial sketches were probably not a fiction,
meaning we all believed this could have, and most likely
did happen, but nor can it be empirically represented
as having had its origins in photographic documentation.
The serious and stoic face we know so well from the Brady
and Gardiner photographs was
likely not the only face of Lincoln. Reading anecdotal
accounts and encounters with the President suggests otherwise,
and there is an inkling of this in these formal portrait
photos, but just an inkling.
Coincidentally, representing 18th
century Americans like Washington
or Jefferson today begins with even greater restriction.
The merest suggestion or adaptation of a smile might be
at perilous variance with historical representation, and
would therefore be unthinkable to suggest changing the
visual record unless one wanted to create a caricature,
cartoon, or intentionally risk creating a work of revisionist
history. |
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When Larry Rivers created his iconic painting
- Washington Crossing the Delaware
(1953) this picture became an instant
curiosity but no one suggested the picture offered new revelations
about the character of George Washington. Indeed the making
of new versions of history’s most celebrated, is often
rejected by historians and curators as re-hash or much along
the line of actors playing iconic roles made wildly famous by
others – Imagine some lesser mortal than Brando playing
Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams Streetcar Named Desire
– it’s best not to try!
Artists can be mere interpreters, often doing it badly,
or add significantly to interpretive
history and the visual record with the potential to inspire
greater inquiry about those individuals who are being portrayed.
Naturally, one hopes for the latter in the case of this sculpture.
Gilbert Stuart, Benjamin West, John Trumbull & Houdon, to
name a few, did the job of picturing history extremely well.
If there’s nothing to add to their interpretations it
probably is better not to try.
But diligence can have its rewards,
especially when you realize that the majority of works representing
the founding period and subsequent periods prior to photography
were often copies of copies which did much to create the phenomenon
I call the “string telephone.”
Minor variations and imperfections led to something totally
different in feeling and meaning after a century of layering
one incorrect move on top of another– we see this all
the time in the images of Washington, and even more dramatically
in the copies of Michelangelo’s David. What you can buy
as a gift shop item bears little real resemblance to either
the original work, in the case of Michelangelo, or the real
man in the case of Washington.
Lincoln, in my view, might be seen as the
first ‘modern’ president and by that I mean
he is no longer separated from us as 18th century Americans
were - by a lack of common context. Men all wear long pants,
and an industrialized-ing America has gone to war, something
all too familiar, and made so during the civil war by the advent
of photography.
Photography made him accessible and this extensive photo
documentation is also at the heart of speculation about everything
from Lincoln’s depressions to what physical illnesses
he was afflicted by. Interestingly enough, paintings of Lincoln
pale when compared to the photographic record. Interpreting
Lincoln visually has been a largely unsuccessful artistic pursuit,
as far as most painting and sculpture is concerned-although,
many have prospered reproducing the sub-verbal
message that is inherent in the image of Lincoln - that
there are those amongst us who are in possession and in control
of a moral high-ground. Lincoln was nothing, if not the embodiment
and realization of such high minded
purpose - it is precisely this message that is transmitted
through the images of Lincoln, which is why any addition to
the visual record can be only slightly at variance; in Lincoln’s
case the image we conjure of our 16th President and hold dear,
is totally in synch with the historical record; no doubt part
of the reason he remains number one in the hearts and minds
of the majority of Americans.
It was therefore possible, when searching for a compelling action
for this sculpture, to imagine Lincoln doing something that
he was never represented as having done-nothing inherently and
spectacularly interesting, but something which led to the concept
of Lincoln in a subtle and quieter moment - either about to
mount or just having dismounted his horse, perhaps being called
by someone in his Presidential guard or possibly a member of
the family - with one hand on the saddle.
He was in two places at the same time, much as we often are
today. Perhaps this one simple idea is what may give this sculpture
the power to connect with people today – the action resides
believably in all of our subconscious minds – one
is often distracted – doing simple or mundane things
–even America’s most important President. The revelation…and
hardly a small thing, resides in our historical knowledge that
Lincoln was indeed thinking of other
things-some of which are only coming full circle today 146 years
later.
Ivan Schwartz
Founder and Director, StudioEIS
With special thanks to:
Robert H. Smith
Richard Moe, President, the National Trust for Historic Preservation,
Washington, DC
Frank Milligan, Director, President Lincoln’s Cottage,
Washington, DC
Erin Carlson Mast, Curator, President Lincoln’s Cottage,
Washington, DC
Harry Rubenstein, Chair, Division of Politics and Reform, the
National Museum of American History, Washington, DC
James Cornelius, Curator, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library
and Museum, Springfield, IL
Gloria Swift, Curator, Ford’s Theater, Washington, DC
Jenifer Stermer, Curator of Collections, International Museum
of the Horse, Lexington, KY
Cindy Van Horn, Registrar, the Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne, IN
Joan Flinspach, President and CEO, the Lincoln Museum, Fort
Wayne, IN
Stephen Perkins, Sculptor, Instructor, the Grand Central Academy,
NYC
Kenneth McPheeters, Author the American Military Saddle, expert
in antique militaria, San Antonio, TX
Gail Cunard, Executive Director, the Harness Racing Museum,
Goshen, NY
Rebecca Howard, Manager, Historic Collections, the Harness Racing
Museum, Goshen, NY
Bill Cooke, Director, the International Museum of the Horse,
Lexington, KY
Stuart Wiliamson, Sculptor, Quito Ecuador |
