Androgyn III

Androgyn III. Magdalena Abakanowicz. 1985 C.E. Burlap, resin, wood, nails, string.

• At the beginning of World War II, Abakanowicz, then a young girl, witnessed German tanks enter her family’s estate. At one point, a drunken soldier burst into her house and, in Abakanowicz’s presence, shot off her mother’s arm. In 1944, the family was forced to flee the advance of the Soviet army and ended up in Warsaw, where the artist still lives and works. As a teenager, Abakanowicz worked as a nursing assistant in a makeshift hospital caring for the wounded while also finishing her high school education. Her family lost everything during the war and had to hide their aristocratic roots when the nobility became the enemy in postwar Communist Poland. 
• Social Realism demanded images of smiling workers and a perfected society 
• Throughout her life Abakanowicz has continued to live in Poland despite the communist government that held power there until 1989 and the hardships that she and her fellow Poles endured. After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 there was considerable hardship in Warsaw but also a flourishing of the arts. 
• Abakanowicz began creating forms made with fabric and tapestry. 
• The Abakan sculptures refer to clothing but are not functional. They hang from the ceiling and although they allude to human figures, they also reference the natural world. Some gently swing, suggesting the rocking of underwater vegetation, or the flight of birds.
• Abakanowicz began to experiment with other materials including burlap, string, and cotton gauze. 
• The figures are hollow and repetitious
• In these works, the same shape is repeated but the surface of each figure has an individual texture, the result of Abakanowicz’s unique handling of the materials.
• The effect of Seated Figures and Backs can be chilling and is often understood as expressing dehumanization in the twentieth century.
• The piece is made of burlap, resin, wood, nails, and string.
• the Androgyne torsos are seated on low stretchers of wooden logs, perhaps filling in for lost legs.
• Abakanowicz’s figures are mostly androgynous, with their sexual characteristics de-emphasized. The artist wants the viewer to focus on the humanity of the figures rather than their gender.
• A distinguishing feature of all of the burlap casts is the wrinkled skin and the implication of backbones, musculature and veins. The bodies, or body parts, more accurately, are intended to be seen in the round as the hollow interior is as much a part of the piece as the molded exterior. Space is as significant as mass in these works.
• Abakanowicz draws on her personal history, but her sculptures possess an ambiguity that encourages multiple interpretations that speak broadly to human experience. Androgyne III alludes to the brutality of war and the totalitarian state. The body is a husk without arms, legs or a head. It is an expression of suffering, both mournful and disturbing.