#FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN ORIGIN SERIES#

To have 'feet of clay' is to have a hidden flaw or character defect unbeknownst to those who admire you.

#FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN ORIGIN SERIES#

This photograph by the American Bruce Nauman (born 1941) is taken from the series Eleven Color Photographs-including the better-known Self Portrait as a Fountain––which explores the relationship between image and language, taking cues from popular puns and turns of phrase. The origins of the phrase 'feet of clay' are biblical, but the words can also evoke the mythology of the Titan Prometheus, who sculpted humans out of clay. In the early 1970s, Burden set out to test the psychological and physical limits of the artist-most famously in Shoot (1971), when he had a friend shoot him in the arm with a rifle, but also crawling over broken glass ( Through the Night Softly, 1973), having himself nailed to a VW Beetle ( Trans-Fixed, 1974) and being kicked down two flights of stairs ( Kunst-Kick, 1974).īruce Nauman, 'Feet of Clay,' Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art For an artist who consistently pushed boundaries, this moral was of less pertinence than the potent image of the fiery wings, intended to shock an American audience desensitized by the horror of the Vietnam War. The myth of Daedalus and Icarus is a warning against hubris, a warning not to mimic the gods-not to fly too close to the sun. Burden recorded his recreation of the moment when the sun destroyed Icarus’ wings in his own words alongside photographs and ‘'relics'-the broken glass is now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Within a few seconds, Burden jumped up, so that the burning glass crashed to the floor. After spilling gasoline over the glass, the assistants set it alight. When Los Angeles artist Chris Burden (1946–2015) performed Icarus, assistants lifted on to each of his shoulders the end of a six-foot sheet of glass, with each sheet sloping to the floor at right angles to his torso. The following excerpts from Phaidon's Flying Too Close to the Sun, highlight the works of ten contemporary artists who found inspiration in ancient mythologies. In the process, it offers a means of either cloaking or confronting real life––or both.' Mythology demands to be transplanted into the present, reinterpreted according to present day ideas or anxieties. Writes Cahill, 'Human folly and desire are refracted into an unbelievable fable––a boy flying on handmade wings, say––but they are no less recognizable for that. Like art, it has the capacity to compress past and present.

Mythology is so prevalent in art because it resonates across time, embodying new forms while keeping a recognizable base. And, of course, art.'įlying too Close Too the Sun is available on Artspace for $59 Says art historian James Cahill, in the introduction to Phaidon's recently published Flying Too Close to the Sun: Myths in Art from Classical to Contemporary, ' are known to us through countless post-classical sources––Renaissance plays, Freudian psychoanalysis, Hollywood epics, Disney cartoons, advertisements, songs, sayings. Mythologies of ancient civilizations are continually returned to and referenced. These ancient stories are fictitious in narrative, and yet, are they really so far removed from our everyday human experiences? Telling of romance and tragedy, gods and heroes––myths depict an elaborate fantasy world–– from stories of the Cyclops, the one-eyed giant blinded by Odysseus, or the Minotaur, the half-man and half-bull who was born from a queen’s seething passion. Myths (derived from the Greek muthos, meaning 'story'), are tales from a distant past.

Flying too close to the sun origin