- Published on
"Art, then... was only a continuation of what lives and surges within Nature; it grew directly out of Nature; Nature satisfied the same needs as a mother..." Goethe as the Founder of a New Science of Aesthetics
When we engage with biomorphic sculpture, as artists or collectors, we build a bridge between our modern lifestyle and our regenerative source, nature. Learn more about the art movement that seeks a reunion with nature, and how classical thinkers like Goethe found a way to consciously experience nature's manifold forms.
Why We Forgot How to Look
As adults, our thinking is predominantly analytical by nature–for risk management and pattern recognition. We live in hypothetical futures. We've forgotten how to be like children, who live in the moment and know how to play. To create art is to recall that state of being that absorbs life's vibrancy when creating and envisioning a world that doesn't yet exist. Becoming conscious as we grow up has a double effect: it separates us from nature, but it also opens the possibility of reconnecting with it as self-aware individuals — this time by choice rather than instinct.
The question of the human being’s twofold relationship with nature in the context of biomorphism is explored in this piece. Derived from the Greek for "life" and "form," biomorphism aims to capture the dynamic life of nature through inexhaustible artistic expression. Creating like nature was the ideal of many twentieth-century artists, among them Jean Arp, who rejected the catastrophic logic of a world reeling from war. That historical backdrop helps explain why biomorphic forms felt so urgent at the time. (1)
Art that rejected tyranny offered a way back to something whole, at a moment when so much had been broken apart. But the question the movement leaves open is worth pondering today: is thinking really divorced from nature, or is it an extension of nature? Can it become ever more "living"?
The Habit of Naming Things
We have a tendency nowadays to take things apart and label them, the way scientists work in a lab. If I look at a plant, I look at what's different about the petal and the leaf, and so on. To be honest, I don't even have to look that hard, because I've already been told the name — "plant," "tree," "rose" — and my mind assumes it already knows what it is. I pass by it without much notice. The same goes for art and objects. We are not in the habit of giving much time and thought to what we see around us. In response to this inartistic way of categorizing and making sense of the world, the Surrealists circumvented rationality. Jean Arp's collages were created by rejecting intellectual control by letting the pieces of paper find their own composition — a process he called Chance. This may explain why his artwork has a youthful, undefined quality.
When we engage with biomorphic sculpture, as artists or collectors, we build a bridge between our modern lifestyle and our regenerative source, nature. Learn more about the art movement that seeks a reunion with nature, and how classical thinkers like Goethe found a way to consciously experience nature's manifold forms.
Why We Forgot How to Look
As adults, our thinking is predominantly analytical by nature–for risk management and pattern recognition. We live in hypothetical futures. We've forgotten how to be like children, who live in the moment and know how to play. To create art is to recall that state of being that absorbs life's vibrancy when creating and envisioning a world that doesn't yet exist. Becoming conscious as we grow up has a double effect: it separates us from nature, but it also opens the possibility of reconnecting with it as self-aware individuals — this time by choice rather than instinct.
The question of the human being’s twofold relationship with nature in the context of biomorphism is explored in this piece. Derived from the Greek for "life" and "form," biomorphism aims to capture the dynamic life of nature through inexhaustible artistic expression. Creating like nature was the ideal of many twentieth-century artists, among them Jean Arp, who rejected the catastrophic logic of a world reeling from war. That historical backdrop helps explain why biomorphic forms felt so urgent at the time. (1)
Art that rejected tyranny offered a way back to something whole, at a moment when so much had been broken apart. But the question the movement leaves open is worth pondering today: is thinking really divorced from nature, or is it an extension of nature? Can it become ever more "living"?
The Habit of Naming Things
We have a tendency nowadays to take things apart and label them, the way scientists work in a lab. If I look at a plant, I look at what's different about the petal and the leaf, and so on. To be honest, I don't even have to look that hard, because I've already been told the name — "plant," "tree," "rose" — and my mind assumes it already knows what it is. I pass by it without much notice. The same goes for art and objects. We are not in the habit of giving much time and thought to what we see around us. In response to this inartistic way of categorizing and making sense of the world, the Surrealists circumvented rationality. Jean Arp's collages were created by rejecting intellectual control by letting the pieces of paper find their own composition — a process he called Chance. This may explain why his artwork has a youthful, undefined quality.
Jean (Hans) Arp Untitled (Collage with Squares) via MoMA
“Biomorphism art stands as a testament to the human fascination with nature’s beauty and complexity.” (2)
The multitude of nature can be overwhelming to the observer, and labeling and categorizing helps us cope with an abundance of life that, at first glance, looks chaotic. Goethe found a way to see the whole and locate a hidden ordering principle within the multitude of plant forms, which is instructive for looking at biomorphic sculpture. This is called “Urpflanze,” German for the archetypal plant, which is an ideal botanical model from which all plant forms are derived. (3) For him, the plant revealed itself as a whole and its originator revealed itself too — something beyond what the ordinary eye could see, what Goethe called "the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all plant forms." He had watched the same shape-shifting law working across the whole range of plant forms, with his own eyes. When he later described this to Schiller, who objected that this was an idea and not an experience, Goethe answered simply: "Then I see my ideas with my eyes."
From Surrealism to Goetheanism
Twentieth-century Surrealism aimed to create directly from the subconscious, to feel one with nature by bypassing the analytical mind altogether. Goetheanism takes a different route to the same destination. Nothing needs to be bypassed, because thinking — pure thinking — was never outside nature to begin with. It is a human being's experience of the essential in nature.
“Goethe’s thinking was not rigid with inflexible contours; it was a thinking in which the concepts continually metamorphose. Thereby his concepts became, if I may put it this way, intimately adapted to the process that plant nature itself goes through.” –Rudolf Steiner, via Nature Institute (4)
Where Surrealism tries to get underneath thought, Goetheanism asks us to follow thought all the way through, until it becomes a kind of perception in its own right.
Biomorphic sculpture, like nature, keeps growing and transforming. It enhances our perception: we do not immediately know what we are looking at. It brings the soothing shapes and textures of nature while leaving us space for discovery. In stimulating our curiosity about form, we continue the journey the artist began and lived through in the creative process.
See the work for yourself: View "Rising Confluence" on Artsy
Q & A: Pisapia's Sculpture Process
You start from a platonic solid — a fixed, geometric form — and end with something that reads as organic, almost grown. Where in that process does the "growing" actually happen? Is there a moment you can point to?
It happens right at the start, actually — I begin from geometric solids, but the moment I start adding roundedness, that's already growth. The solid begins to shift, and somewhere in that shifting it becomes alive. It's less a switch than a threshold I cross while pursuing the form through imagination.
Steiner's idea of pure thinking suggests the form isn't decided in advance, but isn't accidental either. When you're working the double-bent plane, do you know where a surface is going before it gets there, or does the piece tell you?
I stay away from flat surfaces. I'm looking for a curve that can sing — taut, not soft. Nature doesn't have dead surfaces; the energy of life has to keep flowing through the form, and a flat plane can't carry that. What happens is the starting geometry gets taken over by what I think of as the water element. The straight line doesn't disappear — it's still there, but now serving life and movement invisibly, inside the double curving plane. Technically this often means raising a lifeless flat plane into a lifelike hyperboloid plane, which works as a kind of template for infinite variation. So in a way I'm not inventing the movement — I'm tapping consciously into something nature already does, and letting the geometry become its vehicle. (More on this in the blog post on the double-bent plane.)
On The Double Bent Plane: https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/the-double-bent-plane-a-journey-of-self-transformation
Goethe said he could "see his ideas with his eyes." Is there a moment in your process — maybe holding the material, maybe stepping back from it — where you'd say something similar happens to you?
I don't impose an idea onto the material — I try to find a balance, extending nature without losing myself in it. The closest I can describe it: I look, and I meet what I'm perceiving with my own thinking, so I'm thinking with and through the material, not about it from a distance. The working knowledge of the language of form enables my collaboration with it from the inside. Every form is different and requires a unique treatment. I try to enhance the living aspect of the plane, bring out what wants to emerge and harmonize it.
You work in series. Does one piece in a series ever change how you understand an earlier one — the way a later leaf might reveal something about the first leaf on the same stem?
With a series I'm looking for a sense of what's trying to come through — it's not definite yet, more an observation I'm sensing what is arising from form to form as I go. There's a leading idea, but it isn't a concept I'm illustrating — something like a theme. Unlike conceptual work, I don't start with a fixed image in mind; I arrive at the form through discovery.
Sometimes a big jump between two pieces is right, but there has to be a red thread holding them together. That's where fresh eyes matter — coming back to the series with some distance, imagining the gaps between pieces, the invisible stage in between one form and the next. That work is really how I judge whether the metamorphosis works from one piece to another.
A lot of contemporary sculpture treats the subconscious as the route to something "natural" — chance, instinct, letting go of intention. Your work seems to take the opposite route, through conscious form-finding. Was that a deliberate choice, or did it just turn out that way?
It's completely deliberate — it's in line with a spiritual practice of increasing awareness and consciousness with intention. The idea matters as a starting point, but I try not to overcontrol it. It's only by holding that balance that I can extend nature beyond its own limits — work with it in a way that takes it further than it could go on its own. This would not be possible without a working knowledge of formative principles; I have to actually understand nature's form-creating principles. So no, it's not chance, and it's not instinct. It's closer to what nature is already doing.
Goethe said he could "see his ideas with his eyes." Is there a moment in your process — maybe holding the material, maybe stepping back from it — where you'd say something similar happens to you?
I don't impose an idea onto the material — I try to find a balance, extending nature without losing myself in it. The closest I can describe it: I look, and I meet what I'm perceiving with my own thinking, so I'm thinking with and through the material, not about it from a distance. The working knowledge of the language of form enables my collaboration with it from the inside. Every form is different and requires a unique treatment. I try to enhance the living aspect of the plane, bring out what wants to emerge and harmonize it.
You work in series. Does one piece in a series ever change how you understand an earlier one — the way a later leaf might reveal something about the first leaf on the same stem?
With a series I'm looking for a sense of what's trying to come through — it's not definite yet, more an observation I'm sensing what is arising from form to form as I go. There's a leading idea, but it isn't a concept I'm illustrating — something like a theme. Unlike conceptual work, I don't start with a fixed image in mind; I arrive at the form through discovery.
Sometimes a big jump between two pieces is right, but there has to be a red thread holding them together. That's where fresh eyes matter — coming back to the series with some distance, imagining the gaps between pieces, the invisible stage in between one form and the next. That work is really how I judge whether the metamorphosis works from one piece to another.
A lot of contemporary sculpture treats the subconscious as the route to something "natural" — chance, instinct, letting go of intention. Your work seems to take the opposite route, through conscious form-finding. Was that a deliberate choice, or did it just turn out that way?
It's completely deliberate — it's in line with a spiritual practice of increasing awareness and consciousness with intention. The idea matters as a starting point, but I try not to overcontrol it. It's only by holding that balance that I can extend nature beyond its own limits — work with it in a way that takes it further than it could go on its own. This would not be possible without a working knowledge of formative principles; I have to actually understand nature's form-creating principles. So no, it's not chance, and it's not instinct. It's closer to what nature is already doing.
Commission process created using a handmade sculpture model in the studio and visual renderings of the process
Want the fuller picture of the philosophy that shapes Pisapia's contemporary sculpture? Read the Collector's Guide. (https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/collectors-guide.html)
Reference
1)https://ideelart.com/blogs/magazine/jean-arp-and-the-abstraction-inspired-by-nature
2)https://artincontext.org/biomorphism/
3)https://medium.com/@SyntropicWisdom/goethe-the-formgiver-of-lifes-living-metamorphosis-rediscovering-nature-s-syntropic-blueprint-103a74803e2d
4)https://www.natureinstitute.org/about/rudolf-steiner
Further Reading
An Artist's Perspective On Perceiving Sculpture
https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/archives/05-2025
Staying True to Materials: What Makes Hepworth's Work Unique in Sculpture?
https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/archives/11-2025
On The Double Bent Plane: https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/the-double-bent-plane-a-journey-of-self-transformation
Want the fuller picture of the philosophy that shapes Pisapia's contemporary sculpture? Read the Collector's Guide. (https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/collectors-guide.html)
Reference
1)https://ideelart.com/blogs/magazine/jean-arp-and-the-abstraction-inspired-by-nature
2)https://artincontext.org/biomorphism/
3)https://medium.com/@SyntropicWisdom/goethe-the-formgiver-of-lifes-living-metamorphosis-rediscovering-nature-s-syntropic-blueprint-103a74803e2d
4)https://www.natureinstitute.org/about/rudolf-steiner
Further Reading
An Artist's Perspective On Perceiving Sculpture
https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/archives/05-2025
Staying True to Materials: What Makes Hepworth's Work Unique in Sculpture?
https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/archives/11-2025
On The Double Bent Plane: https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/the-double-bent-plane-a-journey-of-self-transformation
- Published on
Poems by Flavius Pisapia
Where observation becomes poetry — and poetry becomes truth
On Method & Meaning
The Goethean Fourfold Observation — and the Poem as its Innermost Core
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, scientist, and philosopher, developed a way of knowing the world not through detached analysis but through deep, patient participation. Goethean observation is a fourfold journey into the being of any phenomenon — a progression from the surface of things toward their invisible centre, from the measurable to the immeasurable.
In Goethe's method, the observer does not stand apart from the object. Instead, one gradually becomes the artwork, building a living inner image through successive stages of attention. This is both a scientific discipline and a spiritual practice — a way of seeing that restores wholeness to our fragmented modern gaze.
Sculptor and art therapist Flavius Pisapia applies this fourfold method to the observation of significant artworks, always arriving at the same final question: What does this work reveal about its innermost nature? The poem is his answer. It is not decoration. It is the culmination of the entire act of observation.
The Goethean method has four stages. The first is the Physical Stage — pure description of what can be weighed, measured, and seen. No interpretation. Only faithful attention to the object's material reality. The second is the Energy Stage — how does life, movement, and force circulate within the form? Here the observer traces invisible rhythms and flows, moving beyond the surface into something dynamic. The third is the Feeling Stage — stepping imaginatively inside the artwork. What feelings does the form itself carry? This is not a subjective emotional reaction but a disciplined "feeling into" the work's own soul-quality. Finally comes the Essence Stage — the poem, the vision, the distillation. Having passed through all outer layers, the observer arrives at the deepest identity of the object: its irreducible selfhood.
This is where Flavius writes. This is where each poem in this collection was born.
The Four Stages
Stage I Physical
Shape, colour, texture, dimension. Precise, faithful description of what can be weighed and measured.
Stage II Energy
Movement, flow, life forces. How does vitality travel through the form? Drawing the invisible currents.
Stage III Feeling
Imaginative entry into the artwork. The form's own feeling-quality — moods, soul-gesture, inner atmosphere.
Stage IV Essence
✦ The poem.
The innermost core. A creative response that speaks the work's irreducible identity into language.
"When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art." — J.W. Goethe
The Poems Essence
Responses — from first observation to last
Poem · I · May 2025
Reclining Figure, 1951
Henry Moore — Plaster & String, Tate Modern
Moore's reclining figure holds a profound tension between gravity on its left — rooted, heavy, cone-like forms anchoring to earth — and levity on its right, where the form seems drawn upward toward open air and light. Flavius observed this sculpture through all four stages, finding in it a quality of release and receptivity. The essence stage prompted not a written poem but rather the open question of what this form "tells" — its answer residing in the act of looking itself. Flavius describes the experience as: "Relaxed, open, interested, grounded, stable, and peaceful." [An Open Looking] Flavius Pisapia At the fourth stage, the artwork becomes a teacher. Do not force interpretation — let it emerge. You might write, draw, dance, or simply sit in understanding. Your creative response becomes dialogue with the work.
Awakening
Flavius Pisapia
I am
Open minded
Energy
Flowing through
This body of light
Relaxed and
Grounded
Peaceful
A kin interest
In the world
Beyond
Adds stability
To my being
Poem · II · June 2025
Endless Column, 1918
Constantin Brâncuși — Oak, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Brâncuși's Endless Column consists of eight truncated pyramids repeating upward and downward, their rhythm both binding and unbinding — a dactyl of form ascending toward infinity. The column's top and bottom remain open, not ending in a point, as if to let eternity flow through. Flavius observed its energy as "steadily flowing downwards, catching itself at regular intervals," and felt its character as Upright, Timeless, Mercurial — a meditative ladder between material and spiritual worlds, rooted in Romanian funerary tradition where such pillars marked the soul's ascent.
You are an I
Flavius Pisapia
Rhythmic ebb and flow
Connecting worlds
You stand upright between
Space and time
Intuition opens downwards
Strength consolidates upwards
You move unmoved in space without
You exist uninterrupted in time within.
Poem · III · July 2025
7000 Oaks, 1982
Joseph Beuys — Inaugurated at Documenta, Kassel
Beuys placed a living oak tree beside a basalt column as an act of social healing — a monument of two objects, one expanding and dying-and-renewing through time, the other rigid and slowly being consumed by geological entropy. Flavius felt this as a riddle of profound ecological and spiritual polarity: life thriving on lifelessness, stone exalted by life. The monument asks: can two opposites not only coexist but sanctify each other? The poem emerged as a direct address to both beings, hearing them speak their mutual reliance.
Nature's Riddle
Flavius Pisapia
You are a riddle
The way you relate to each other.
You Plants thrive
On the Rock’s lifelessness.
You Rocks are exalted
In the life of Plants.
You Plants grow,
Out of the Timeless.
You Rocks evolve,
In Time’s living dimension.
Poem · IV · August 2025
Big Horizontal Red, 1956
Alexander Calder — Sheet metal, wire & paint
Calder's enormous red mobile stretches over three meters, its crimson sheet metal elements trembling on wire armatures at every breath of air. What at first appears serene and harmonious, "like an upside-down tree," reveals upon longer observation sharp fragments carrying a different energy — pockets of anger, blades of wrath, micro-aggression held in perfect suspended balance. This is the deep paradox of Calder's art: the engineer-entertainer who was, as one writer noted, both a lover of fun and "a grim battler" against things evil. The poem captures this tension between levity and pain suspended above.
Migraine
Flavius Pisapia
Suspense from above
Cloud of pain, crown of sharp thorns
Freckled headache throbs
Poem · V · September 2025
California Scenario, 1980
Isamu Noguchi — Sculptural garden, Costa Mesa, California
Noguchi's 1.6-acre garden at the heart of a commercial district compresses the entire geological soul of California — desert, water source, stone — into an ordered landscape of polarity. Flavius observed a pyramid at the summit expelling a waterway below it, the scene tinged with green atmosphere, simultaneously frozen and alive. The fourfold observation registered somber mystery, desolate antiquity — a place where life and death meet formally, and the cosmos "peers in" on human activity. The poem is an address to this place of gift and meeting.
The Gift
Flavius Pisapia
In a hierarchy of heights
Polarity comes to meet me
Bringing somber mystery
Desolate antiquity
Life and death.
Poem · VI · November 2025
Single Form, 1961–64
Barbara Hepworth — Bronze, 21 feet, United Nations Building, New York
Hepworth's twenty-one-foot bronze rises at the UN like a smooth pebble enlarged to monumental scale — a tall, slender form with an elliptical void piercing its upper section, three incised lines traversing its plane, and a dotted surface texture that dances in light. The form tapers at its base to create an imposing upward thrust, yet its shallow profile and absorbing void convey an inner stillness. Flavius experienced it as both imposingly loud and somehow deflated — a unity in division, a harmony of forms that holds contradiction in proud resolution.
Harmony Reconstructed
Flavius Pisapia
Unity in division
Harmony of forms
Deflated
But imposingly loud.
Poem · VII · December 2025
The Thinker, 1902
Auguste Rodin — Bronze (monumental cast)
Rodin's Thinker was originally conceived as part of his Gates of Hell — inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy — and depicts a heroic figure in profound, painstaking contemplation: right elbow on left thigh, chin resting on hand, every muscle gripped in the effort of thought. Flavius observed all energy flowing inward, the pose creating intense contraction, the surface wrinkled "as if the bronze itself has aged under the weight of contemplation." Rilke wrote that this figure made the whole body into a head. Flavius entered this form and found a violet spiritual depth — the immeasurable by which everything is measured.
Violet
Flavius Pisapia
I'm inwardly frowning
to a tense gravity--
a muscular tension.
Suddenly I enter
a deep violet,
the immeasurable
by which everything
is measured.
Poem · VIII · January 2026
A Clay Sphere
Clay Modelling Exercise, Goa, India · 2025
During a clay modelling workshop conducted at the House of Niso in Goa, participants built a sphere by adding bits of clay around an invisible central point — one of the five Platonic solids — building it in three-dimensional space, smoothing, turning, and pressing until it was ready for fourfold observation. The sphere revealed itself as profoundly moving: in the physical stage, smooth and cool; in the energy stage, quietly full of concentrated potential; in the feeling stage, peaceful, joyful, even jolly. At the essence stage, Flavius wrote spontaneously — discovering how a simple form can become a mirror for the wholeness of human experience. "We could go on perfecting the sphere forever," he observed. "The moment felt like a segment of eternity unfolding in our hands."
Radiating Inwards
Flavius Pisapia
Twenty centimeters of round stillness
I'm calm and gentle
Waiting for you
Ready and welcoming
Our joint potential
Is radiating inwards
Concentrating calmness.
Poem · IX · February 2026
Gentle Reach, 2025
Flavius Pisapia — Working Model, Living Forms Series
Gentle Reach is part of Pisapia's Living Forms series, in which the double bent plane serves as a building block grown organically outward from a core — additive clay technique, open space surrounding the planes like a plant reaching toward light. The biomorphic forms were distilled from imaginative encounters with the sea: waves rising, unfurling, foaming, each phase briefly itself before becoming the next. The poem emerged from contemplating this quality of becoming — the warm flutter of something not yet named, the question that follows the moment of perception like a shadow at noon.
The Question Remains
Flavius Pisapia
I feel warm--
like a blossom unfurling
in unexpected sun.
Curious, this flutter
I can't name,
can't stop to examine
while the world rushes on.
But the question follows,
soft and persistent
as a shadow at noon.
October 2025 · A Journey of Self Transformation
Six ceramic sculptures — with their essence notes
In this exhibition series at The Cube Gallery, Goa, each sculpture in Pisapia's self-transformation sequence was accompanied by a condensed essence-verse — brief haiku-like distillations written directly from the sculptural forms themselves, tracing the arc of human awakening from first self-awareness to full manifestation.
Self Aware
Gathering together, Seeing the moving parts, Focusing on aspects of myself.
Self Interest
I take interest in myself: From weakness strength, From dispersion focus.
Self Potential
Larger than life, Yin yang, potential movement, Spring-like action.
Self Power
Gathering from the boundaries. Upward jump, over the inner space.
Self Rhythm
Firmly rooted, I move strongly — upwards, towards the One.
Self Manifest
Spoken from beyond space — landing ribbon, manifesting.
"We are shaped by the nature of the objects in our environment."
— Flavius Pisapia, Flavius Pisapia Studio —
All poems © Flavius Pisapia
Where observation becomes poetry — and poetry becomes truth
On Method & Meaning
The Goethean Fourfold Observation — and the Poem as its Innermost Core
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, scientist, and philosopher, developed a way of knowing the world not through detached analysis but through deep, patient participation. Goethean observation is a fourfold journey into the being of any phenomenon — a progression from the surface of things toward their invisible centre, from the measurable to the immeasurable.
In Goethe's method, the observer does not stand apart from the object. Instead, one gradually becomes the artwork, building a living inner image through successive stages of attention. This is both a scientific discipline and a spiritual practice — a way of seeing that restores wholeness to our fragmented modern gaze.
Sculptor and art therapist Flavius Pisapia applies this fourfold method to the observation of significant artworks, always arriving at the same final question: What does this work reveal about its innermost nature? The poem is his answer. It is not decoration. It is the culmination of the entire act of observation.
The Goethean method has four stages. The first is the Physical Stage — pure description of what can be weighed, measured, and seen. No interpretation. Only faithful attention to the object's material reality. The second is the Energy Stage — how does life, movement, and force circulate within the form? Here the observer traces invisible rhythms and flows, moving beyond the surface into something dynamic. The third is the Feeling Stage — stepping imaginatively inside the artwork. What feelings does the form itself carry? This is not a subjective emotional reaction but a disciplined "feeling into" the work's own soul-quality. Finally comes the Essence Stage — the poem, the vision, the distillation. Having passed through all outer layers, the observer arrives at the deepest identity of the object: its irreducible selfhood.
This is where Flavius writes. This is where each poem in this collection was born.
The Four Stages
Stage I Physical
Shape, colour, texture, dimension. Precise, faithful description of what can be weighed and measured.
Stage II Energy
Movement, flow, life forces. How does vitality travel through the form? Drawing the invisible currents.
Stage III Feeling
Imaginative entry into the artwork. The form's own feeling-quality — moods, soul-gesture, inner atmosphere.
Stage IV Essence
✦ The poem.
The innermost core. A creative response that speaks the work's irreducible identity into language.
"When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art." — J.W. Goethe
The Poems Essence
Responses — from first observation to last
Poem · I · May 2025
Reclining Figure, 1951
Henry Moore — Plaster & String, Tate Modern
Moore's reclining figure holds a profound tension between gravity on its left — rooted, heavy, cone-like forms anchoring to earth — and levity on its right, where the form seems drawn upward toward open air and light. Flavius observed this sculpture through all four stages, finding in it a quality of release and receptivity. The essence stage prompted not a written poem but rather the open question of what this form "tells" — its answer residing in the act of looking itself. Flavius describes the experience as: "Relaxed, open, interested, grounded, stable, and peaceful." [An Open Looking] Flavius Pisapia At the fourth stage, the artwork becomes a teacher. Do not force interpretation — let it emerge. You might write, draw, dance, or simply sit in understanding. Your creative response becomes dialogue with the work.
Awakening
Flavius Pisapia
I am
Open minded
Energy
Flowing through
This body of light
Relaxed and
Grounded
Peaceful
A kin interest
In the world
Beyond
Adds stability
To my being
Poem · II · June 2025
Endless Column, 1918
Constantin Brâncuși — Oak, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Brâncuși's Endless Column consists of eight truncated pyramids repeating upward and downward, their rhythm both binding and unbinding — a dactyl of form ascending toward infinity. The column's top and bottom remain open, not ending in a point, as if to let eternity flow through. Flavius observed its energy as "steadily flowing downwards, catching itself at regular intervals," and felt its character as Upright, Timeless, Mercurial — a meditative ladder between material and spiritual worlds, rooted in Romanian funerary tradition where such pillars marked the soul's ascent.
You are an I
Flavius Pisapia
Rhythmic ebb and flow
Connecting worlds
You stand upright between
Space and time
Intuition opens downwards
Strength consolidates upwards
You move unmoved in space without
You exist uninterrupted in time within.
Poem · III · July 2025
7000 Oaks, 1982
Joseph Beuys — Inaugurated at Documenta, Kassel
Beuys placed a living oak tree beside a basalt column as an act of social healing — a monument of two objects, one expanding and dying-and-renewing through time, the other rigid and slowly being consumed by geological entropy. Flavius felt this as a riddle of profound ecological and spiritual polarity: life thriving on lifelessness, stone exalted by life. The monument asks: can two opposites not only coexist but sanctify each other? The poem emerged as a direct address to both beings, hearing them speak their mutual reliance.
Nature's Riddle
Flavius Pisapia
You are a riddle
The way you relate to each other.
You Plants thrive
On the Rock’s lifelessness.
You Rocks are exalted
In the life of Plants.
You Plants grow,
Out of the Timeless.
You Rocks evolve,
In Time’s living dimension.
Poem · IV · August 2025
Big Horizontal Red, 1956
Alexander Calder — Sheet metal, wire & paint
Calder's enormous red mobile stretches over three meters, its crimson sheet metal elements trembling on wire armatures at every breath of air. What at first appears serene and harmonious, "like an upside-down tree," reveals upon longer observation sharp fragments carrying a different energy — pockets of anger, blades of wrath, micro-aggression held in perfect suspended balance. This is the deep paradox of Calder's art: the engineer-entertainer who was, as one writer noted, both a lover of fun and "a grim battler" against things evil. The poem captures this tension between levity and pain suspended above.
Migraine
Flavius Pisapia
Suspense from above
Cloud of pain, crown of sharp thorns
Freckled headache throbs
Poem · V · September 2025
California Scenario, 1980
Isamu Noguchi — Sculptural garden, Costa Mesa, California
Noguchi's 1.6-acre garden at the heart of a commercial district compresses the entire geological soul of California — desert, water source, stone — into an ordered landscape of polarity. Flavius observed a pyramid at the summit expelling a waterway below it, the scene tinged with green atmosphere, simultaneously frozen and alive. The fourfold observation registered somber mystery, desolate antiquity — a place where life and death meet formally, and the cosmos "peers in" on human activity. The poem is an address to this place of gift and meeting.
The Gift
Flavius Pisapia
In a hierarchy of heights
Polarity comes to meet me
Bringing somber mystery
Desolate antiquity
Life and death.
Poem · VI · November 2025
Single Form, 1961–64
Barbara Hepworth — Bronze, 21 feet, United Nations Building, New York
Hepworth's twenty-one-foot bronze rises at the UN like a smooth pebble enlarged to monumental scale — a tall, slender form with an elliptical void piercing its upper section, three incised lines traversing its plane, and a dotted surface texture that dances in light. The form tapers at its base to create an imposing upward thrust, yet its shallow profile and absorbing void convey an inner stillness. Flavius experienced it as both imposingly loud and somehow deflated — a unity in division, a harmony of forms that holds contradiction in proud resolution.
Harmony Reconstructed
Flavius Pisapia
Unity in division
Harmony of forms
Deflated
But imposingly loud.
Poem · VII · December 2025
The Thinker, 1902
Auguste Rodin — Bronze (monumental cast)
Rodin's Thinker was originally conceived as part of his Gates of Hell — inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy — and depicts a heroic figure in profound, painstaking contemplation: right elbow on left thigh, chin resting on hand, every muscle gripped in the effort of thought. Flavius observed all energy flowing inward, the pose creating intense contraction, the surface wrinkled "as if the bronze itself has aged under the weight of contemplation." Rilke wrote that this figure made the whole body into a head. Flavius entered this form and found a violet spiritual depth — the immeasurable by which everything is measured.
Violet
Flavius Pisapia
I'm inwardly frowning
to a tense gravity--
a muscular tension.
Suddenly I enter
a deep violet,
the immeasurable
by which everything
is measured.
Poem · VIII · January 2026
A Clay Sphere
Clay Modelling Exercise, Goa, India · 2025
During a clay modelling workshop conducted at the House of Niso in Goa, participants built a sphere by adding bits of clay around an invisible central point — one of the five Platonic solids — building it in three-dimensional space, smoothing, turning, and pressing until it was ready for fourfold observation. The sphere revealed itself as profoundly moving: in the physical stage, smooth and cool; in the energy stage, quietly full of concentrated potential; in the feeling stage, peaceful, joyful, even jolly. At the essence stage, Flavius wrote spontaneously — discovering how a simple form can become a mirror for the wholeness of human experience. "We could go on perfecting the sphere forever," he observed. "The moment felt like a segment of eternity unfolding in our hands."
Radiating Inwards
Flavius Pisapia
Twenty centimeters of round stillness
I'm calm and gentle
Waiting for you
Ready and welcoming
Our joint potential
Is radiating inwards
Concentrating calmness.
Poem · IX · February 2026
Gentle Reach, 2025
Flavius Pisapia — Working Model, Living Forms Series
Gentle Reach is part of Pisapia's Living Forms series, in which the double bent plane serves as a building block grown organically outward from a core — additive clay technique, open space surrounding the planes like a plant reaching toward light. The biomorphic forms were distilled from imaginative encounters with the sea: waves rising, unfurling, foaming, each phase briefly itself before becoming the next. The poem emerged from contemplating this quality of becoming — the warm flutter of something not yet named, the question that follows the moment of perception like a shadow at noon.
The Question Remains
Flavius Pisapia
I feel warm--
like a blossom unfurling
in unexpected sun.
Curious, this flutter
I can't name,
can't stop to examine
while the world rushes on.
But the question follows,
soft and persistent
as a shadow at noon.
October 2025 · A Journey of Self Transformation
Six ceramic sculptures — with their essence notes
In this exhibition series at The Cube Gallery, Goa, each sculpture in Pisapia's self-transformation sequence was accompanied by a condensed essence-verse — brief haiku-like distillations written directly from the sculptural forms themselves, tracing the arc of human awakening from first self-awareness to full manifestation.
Self Aware
Gathering together, Seeing the moving parts, Focusing on aspects of myself.
Self Interest
I take interest in myself: From weakness strength, From dispersion focus.
Self Potential
Larger than life, Yin yang, potential movement, Spring-like action.
Self Power
Gathering from the boundaries. Upward jump, over the inner space.
Self Rhythm
Firmly rooted, I move strongly — upwards, towards the One.
Self Manifest
Spoken from beyond space — landing ribbon, manifesting.
"We are shaped by the nature of the objects in our environment."
— Flavius Pisapia, Flavius Pisapia Studio —
All poems © Flavius Pisapia
- Published on
Sculpture, alongside ceramics and architecture, is distinct from image-making arts like painting, and contrasts with temporal arts like literature and performance. It is one of the oldest forms of human expression, with early sculptures representing human and animal figures originating 35,000–40,000 years BP — among them the famous Venus of Willendorf, a small ivory figurine carved in the Swabian Jura, and the Lion-man of Hohlenstein Stadel, a chimeric figure, permanent objects surviving to modern day, stamped with ancient mythic imagination.
Venus of Willendorf, Natural History Museum, Vienna
The Lion Man, British Museum
The Resistance of Matter
The term plastic art comes from the ancient Greek plastikos, meaning "to mould," and is synonymous with modelling — the physical manipulation of material such as clay or wax. Matter offers resistance physically: the craft demands intense labour, as when a sculptor works stone with hammer and chisel. But matter also offers considerable resistance to ideas and feelings, especially when compared to the image or temporal arts, whose materials and techniques are closer to the ephemeral. A brushstroke or a line of verse can suggest a fleeting emotion with relative directness; with sculpture, the material plays as much of a part in the idea as craft, form-language, and place.
In modern art, abstract expressionism in sculpture was inspired by the painters who broke with tradition — such as Pollock and de Kooning, whose gestural and improvisatory methods encouraged sculptors like David Smith and Ibram Lassaw to explore analogous freedoms in metal and wire. As an art writer, it is sometimes challenging to draw a clear connection between idea and form in sculpture; and yet once this connection is found concretely, the interdependence of the two is clearly felt and deepens one's appreciation considerably.
In abstraction, sculpture can on one hand extract components of natural and man-made forms to create entirely new objects — as seen in the Constructivist movement, where artists like Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner built spatial constructions from industrial materials, asserting that art should reflect the structures of modern life. On the other hand, certain modernist sculptors, working from a singular relationship to the natural world, created from themselves a new language of form — as though adding a new dimension to nature's own vocabulary, imbued with the individual thought and feeling life of the artist. Constantin Brâncuși is perhaps the supreme example: his Bird in Space series does not depict a bird so much as distill the essence of flight — upward movement made permanent in bronze or marble. Henry Moore similarly drew from landscape, bone, and the human body to arrive at forms that feel both ancient and rooted in the personal.
In modern art, abstract expressionism in sculpture was inspired by the painters who broke with tradition — such as Pollock and de Kooning, whose gestural and improvisatory methods encouraged sculptors like David Smith and Ibram Lassaw to explore analogous freedoms in metal and wire. As an art writer, it is sometimes challenging to draw a clear connection between idea and form in sculpture; and yet once this connection is found concretely, the interdependence of the two is clearly felt and deepens one's appreciation considerably.
In abstraction, sculpture can on one hand extract components of natural and man-made forms to create entirely new objects — as seen in the Constructivist movement, where artists like Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner built spatial constructions from industrial materials, asserting that art should reflect the structures of modern life. On the other hand, certain modernist sculptors, working from a singular relationship to the natural world, created from themselves a new language of form — as though adding a new dimension to nature's own vocabulary, imbued with the individual thought and feeling life of the artist. Constantin Brâncuși is perhaps the supreme example: his Bird in Space series does not depict a bird so much as distill the essence of flight — upward movement made permanent in bronze or marble. Henry Moore similarly drew from landscape, bone, and the human body to arrive at forms that feel both ancient and rooted in the personal.
Head No. 2, Naum Gabo, Tate St. Ives
Dynamic Projection, Antoine Pevsner, 1931
What Sculpture Is
This approach elevated the subjective to the universal. The sculptures are made from an organic language of form that includes the human figure, and though abstract, contain something of an attitude or posture — somehow the sculptor has poured feeling into the vessel, breathing life into it. The evocative forms reveal a symbiotic relationship between sculptor and nature: the environment with its objects influences the artist, and through the creative process the artist's hand shapes new forms that find their homes in cities or landscapes as monumental works, elevating a place. For example, Rodin's The Thinker anchors public squares with concentrated inward force.
The Thinker, August Rodin
August Rodin
Experiencing Form
Sculptures are at their most impactful when enlarged and set in public spaces to interact with architecture or landscape design; Richard Serra's The Matter of Time — eight monumental weathered steel sculptures installed permanently in the Guggenheim Bilbao transforms the act of walking into a spatial and temporal experience. Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Chicago turns the skyline into something malleable, participatory. By contrast, paintings and poems are best enjoyed in solitude, in an interior, more private setting. Even in an exhibition or performance, a sense of intimate community is created by the event to receive the delicacy of imagery — one leans in, rather than steps back.
"We are shaped by the nature of the objects in our environment." — Flavius Pisapia.
"We are shaped by the nature of the objects in our environment." — Flavius Pisapia.
Matter of Time, Richard Serra, Guggenheim Bilbao
Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor
Pisapia's Living Forms: A Working Note
For the Living Forms series, the double bent plane was used as a building block from which the form grew organically. Primarily using an additive technique in clay — building outward from a core rather than carving away — there is a lot of open space around the planes, resembling a plant reaching toward light. The dynamic movement seen along the borders was achieved by carrying the edges into the plane, a stylistic element running through all three works in the series, striking a balance between space and matter and bringing a playful dance between the two.
Clay and the Sea
A theme of movement and transitions was distilled into these biomorphic forms from imaginative observations and experiences of the sea interacting with sky and sand — and above all from the wave's movement and metamorphosis. Sea waves offer a wonderful opportunity to perceive the "space between": the never-ending transformation from rising to unfurling to foaming, each phase briefly itself before becoming the next. The use of clay best suits this elemental subject, and the artist's improvisatory way of working quickly to capture the essence of the experience. Clay embodies the artist's “feeling-into” of the wave responsive and malleable to the imaginative idea of becoming.
The speaker in the following poem contemplates the sea, contrasting his personal life of loss and sorrow with nature's serene vitality, and expressing an ultimate longing for release. It perhaps illustrates the poet's deeper desire: to transcend the personal and reach toward the universal through the redemptive power of art.
The speaker in the following poem contemplates the sea, contrasting his personal life of loss and sorrow with nature's serene vitality, and expressing an ultimate longing for release. It perhaps illustrates the poet's deeper desire: to transcend the personal and reach toward the universal through the redemptive power of art.
Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.
An interesting note on the personal to the universal in art, “The more intricate and deeply felt a work of art is, the more relevant it can become; the more general and universal it tries to be, the more it loses its power to move us.” – Kendall Dunkelberg
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent might,
The breath of the moist earth is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.
An interesting note on the personal to the universal in art, “The more intricate and deeply felt a work of art is, the more relevant it can become; the more general and universal it tries to be, the more it loses its power to move us.” – Kendall Dunkelberg
Gentle Reach, Living Forms, 2025 (Working Model)
Poems inspired by Gentle Reach
The Question Remains
by Flavius Pisapia
I feel warm--
like a blossom unfurling
in unexpected sun.
Curious, this flutter
I can't name,
can't stop to examine
while the world rushes on.
But the question follows,
soft and persistent
as a shadow at noon.
by Flavius Pisapia
I feel warm--
like a blossom unfurling
in unexpected sun.
Curious, this flutter
I can't name,
can't stop to examine
while the world rushes on.
But the question follows,
soft and persistent
as a shadow at noon.
Meandering
by Sahya Samson
You like flowing
Down the curvilinear landscape
Collecting laughter in pools
Slipping through crevices
Meandering over fields
Fairy lights and dewdrops
Dotting your playful ways
by Sahya Samson
You like flowing
Down the curvilinear landscape
Collecting laughter in pools
Slipping through crevices
Meandering over fields
Fairy lights and dewdrops
Dotting your playful ways
- Published on
The Fourfold Human Being in Rudolf Steiner's Art Therapy
"To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts - not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by [...] one's individuality." – Rudolf Steiner
The natural world reveals itself in four distinct kingdoms: minerals, plants, animals, and humans. Like the intricate forms that emerge from a simple circle, these kingdoms are part of the wholeness of the world, found in the fourfold human being. In working with clay, we connect with archetypal forms echoed throughout nature—straight, curved, and round. We may also discover profound soul experiences through creative work that enables us to explore our inner nature.
Rudolf Steiner's eurythmy teachings remind us of the forces streaming in and out of the human being. A quote reflecting on a Calendar of the Soul verse, from InMovement Eurythmy: "Through nature, the spirit discovers anew its crown of creation, the human being, who is a thinking being. The spirit of thinking gives itself to the sense world, glorifying it. But the human being who originates in the spirit world, must create 'nature' in his or her own soul." (1)
"To be free is to be capable of thinking one's own thoughts - not the thoughts merely of the body, or of society, but thoughts generated by [...] one's individuality." – Rudolf Steiner
The natural world reveals itself in four distinct kingdoms: minerals, plants, animals, and humans. Like the intricate forms that emerge from a simple circle, these kingdoms are part of the wholeness of the world, found in the fourfold human being. In working with clay, we connect with archetypal forms echoed throughout nature—straight, curved, and round. We may also discover profound soul experiences through creative work that enables us to explore our inner nature.
Rudolf Steiner's eurythmy teachings remind us of the forces streaming in and out of the human being. A quote reflecting on a Calendar of the Soul verse, from InMovement Eurythmy: "Through nature, the spirit discovers anew its crown of creation, the human being, who is a thinking being. The spirit of thinking gives itself to the sense world, glorifying it. But the human being who originates in the spirit world, must create 'nature' in his or her own soul." (1)
The Fourfold Human Being
Understanding how we can connect with our individuality through Steiner's clay modelling method begins with the conception of the fourfold human being.
The Physical Body allows us to act in the world. Our metabolic system serves as the warm, physically active center, studied in detail by modern medical science. In Anthroposophy, we learn that the body is shaped by the human spirit itself—even from a distance, we immediately recognize the human form.
Understanding how we can connect with our individuality through Steiner's clay modelling method begins with the conception of the fourfold human being.
The Physical Body allows us to act in the world. Our metabolic system serves as the warm, physically active center, studied in detail by modern medical science. In Anthroposophy, we learn that the body is shaped by the human spirit itself—even from a distance, we immediately recognize the human form.
Antony Gormley, Untitled (for Francis), 1985
The Etheric Body acts as a container of life forces, keeping the physical body alive and giving it health. The ancients understood these subtle processes more intuitively than we do today. We find this wisdom in Chinese medicine's concept of "chi," yoga's "prana" energy, and the flowing movements of Taichi and eurythmy. Poets have long alluded to this invisible force, as Dylan Thomas wrote: "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower..."
Flowform by John Wilkes, 2011
The Astral Body is witnessed in the expression of personal feelings, desires, and passions. Music, dance, and stories have moved us deeply throughout history. We never exhaust our longing for love through poems or overcome strong emotions like anger or jealousy entirely. Art therapy using color creates a container for our feeling life, helping us navigate and appreciate its richness without being overwhelmed by it. Lists and visual charts for emotions resemble rainbows, showing how nuanced the astral body is. As Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 141: "In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, / For they in thee a thousand errors note; / But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise."
Noa Bornstein, Little Dream Horse (Caballito de Sueño), 2014
The "I" can be visualized as the center of a circle, representing individuality or self-consciousness, while the periphery represents the environment and cosmic forces that influence it. For Steiner, language reveals self-containment in the fact that I name myself "I" and designate no other with this name. Unlike in some spiritual traditions where ego dissolution is the goal, Steiner viewed the "I" as the youngest member of the fourfold being—its dual nature as creative or destructive depending on how it relates to the whole. In the life challenges the ego faces lie the human drama and the call for courage and adventure. Emily Dickinson captured this sense of self-consciousness in "On a Columnar Self": "On a Columnar Self— / How ample to rely / In Tumult—or Extremity— / How good the Certainty / That Lever cannot pry..."
Flavius Pisapia, Spirit, Bronze on stone base, 2020
Clay Modeling and the Fourfold Being
Steiner describes the etheric body as rhythm and space playing into the physical body. Metaphorically, the sphere shows our wholeness and fullness as multidimensional beings in three-dimensional space. Different exercises based on the four aspects are molded by hand.
Through clay work in this method, participants engage with the same creative processes that shape the human being. As an article from the Goetheanum describes it: "By imaginative impulses, sensual indentation, body-perception, emotions and notions forms are developed out of handwork, sculpturing and embossment." (2)
The human being lives in a complex organization and has different needs stemming from it which can be met through anthroposophical art therapy. Different soul forces are harmonized and inner strength is built up by engaging with specific clay exercises. Therapeutically, one can discover what needs transformation, balancing, or strengthening and embark on that transformative journey.
Through this practice, we move toward the freedom Steiner described: the capacity to think our own thoughts and discover our deepest, most essential spiritual self.
Story of Our Clay Exercise: Making A Sphere
We began by adding bits of clay to our palms, each piece joining around an invisible point, building the sphere—one of the five Platonic solids—in three-dimensional space. We shifted and pressed the surface, feeling the roundness, checking the edges, turning and smoothing until we were ready to observe it through the four levels.
This simple exercise proved profoundly moving. "We could go on perfecting the sphere forever," Flavius observed. It's true—the moment felt like a segment of eternity unfolding in our hands. At the end of the clay therapy session, we pinched the sphere piece by piece, mindfully returning the clay back to itself.
We also walked a circle in eurythmy, deepening our experience of the spherical form through movement. See this 2-minute tutorial by Eurythmy 4 You for reference.
Clay sphere by Flavius
Clay sphere by Sahya
Fourfold Observation of a Sphere
Physical Body - What We Perceive
Smooth surface, cool to touch, round and spherical. Medium gray color with circular edges, illuminated by diffused white spotlight.
Shaded Drawing by Flavius
Shaded Drawing by Sahya
Etheric Body - The Life Forces
Quiet, full, still. A sense of concentrated potential—young, healthy, bouncy. The sphere holds the potential for movement like rolling or spinning, yet remains full and contained, somehow replenishing.
Sketch by Flavius
Sketch by Sahya
Astral Body - The Feeling Life
Peaceful, calm, inward-turning, gentle. A quality of waiting, of readiness, of wellbeing. Feelings of pride, sympathy, joy emerging—something jolly and lively, touched with laughter and playfulness. Self-centered yet self-satisfied in the most positive sense.
Color sketch by Flavius
Color sketch by Sahya
The "I" - Essence and Individuality
Two participants captured their experience of the sphere's essence through spontaneous poetry:
Radiating Inwards
by Flavius
Twenty centimeters of round stillness
I'm calm and gentle
Waiting for you
Ready and welcoming
Our joint potential
Is radiating inwards
Concentrating calmness.
The Dancing Spheres
by Sahya
You are young in years
Eternal in joys in
Your circular loops
Child of Divine you
Run Jump Dance.
All who see you, love you.
All who speak with you,
Are replenished.
Through this exercise, we discovered how a simple form can become a mirror for the wholeness of human experience—from the tangible coolness of clay in our hands to the eternal joy radiating from its center.
Art therapy background
“In past work as an art therapist, I watched as clients recreated their self-image simply by modeling clay or painting, thereby integrating a newfound sense of self with their present life. I learned that stories shape us, but by working with our hands, we might reshape them—transforming narratives of struggle into ones of strength and possibility.” –Flavius Pisapia
Pisapia holds an MA in Transpersonal Arts & Therapy, Tobias School of Art & Therapy, England.
As a qualified art therapist with an MA in Transpersonal Arts & Therapy, Pisapia integrates his artistic practice with therapeutic work, facilitating art therapy workshops in India for individuals and groups seeking healing and personal transformation.
Workshop facilitators and participants, House of Niso, Goa, India, 2025
References
1) InMovement Eurythmy – Calendar of the Soul Reflection https://www.facebook.com/100063596095123/posts/pfbid0K9Np96j4iyuxboKbY6hx93q4eGAgqDGt4ZFa8UoseUVZfuTFwemZ1GDMzWsYdUwUl/?app=fbl
2) Goetheanum – Medical Section Painting & Clay https://static.goetheanum.ch/uploads/websites/sektionen/medizinische-sektion/ikam-arts/Dokumente/Deepening-Painting-Sculpting.pdf
3) Tobias Art – Anthroposophical Perspective on the Human Being https://tobiasart.org/2015/10/07/the-anthroposophical-perspective-on-the-structure-and-functioning-of-the-human-being/
- Published on
Wikipedia - The Thinker
Wikipedia - Rodin
"(Rodin's) work laid the groundwork for the modern understanding of the human figure as a site of movement, tension, and emotion rather than static beauty." – Artsper Magazine
When I first encountered Rodin's The Thinker, I recognized the strain of difficult decision-making. Looking deeper, I felt something more—the tortuous effort of thought itself. Poet Rilke wrote that in this figure, "his whole body has become head and all the blood in his veins has become brain." (1)
The sculpture depicts a nude male figure of heroic proportions seated on a rock, leaning forward with his right elbow on his left thigh, his hand supporting his chin in profound contemplation. (2) Through this warrior's body—conceived in Michelangelo's tradition—Rodin captures thinking's physical pain and interiority in bronze.
The Thinker marked a turning point. Sculpture could no longer rest in classical perfection or serve merely as garden decoration. Originally part of Rodin's Gates of Hell, inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, the figure combines philosophical depth with muscular physicality, introducing us to the ugliness of sin and the beauty of reflection. Modern sculpture, initiated by Rodin, now demanded empathic and individual engagement, joining literature and painting as vehicles for thought.
On social media, I discovered teenagers baffled by what could absorb this man so completely. The intensity feels comical to a generation accustomed to lightness. This concentration belongs to maturity, not carefree youth. When did we last take such pains to think deeply about anything? Later abstract sculptors like Calder would balance seriousness with play, bringing levity and movement to form. (3) Rodin's work began sculpture's transformation into a vessel for the soul's direct expression.
How to Practice Art Observation in 4 Stages with Rodin's The Thinker
Art observation is more than looking—it's meeting an artwork as a living being. This layered approach helps you experience sculpture from surface to essence.
Why Structure Matters
Many artworks originate in realms beyond their physical materials. Rushing to label parts ("that's a head... that's a leg...") traps us in preconceptions. These four stages—Physical → Energy → Feeling → Essence—move from what can be measured to what can only be felt.
Stage 1: Physical Characteristics
Describe only what can be weighed, measured, and numbered. Anchor yourself in observable facts. Draw what you see, all or a section of the object.
Example: The black bronze surface catches light in waves across muscular forms. The figure's features combine spherical and pyramidal geometry—a rounded skull meets angular jaw and shoulders. Hair protrudes like a protective helmet, while deep concavities hollow the eyes and cheekbones. The entire surface appears wrinkled and textured, as if the bronze itself has aged under the weight of contemplation.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Stage 2: Energy Characteristics
Observe movement and flow within the form. How does energy travel through the sculpture? Draw the energy (more abstract).
Example: All energy flows inward. The pose creates intense contraction—every muscle grips and holds. Focus drives downward and inward in arrested motion, as if the figure has been frozen mid-thought. There's a dried-up quality here, something withered and hardened. The energy feels cold, tense, absorbed entirely into an interior world. Nothing radiates outward; everything concentrates at a single point deep within.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Stage 3: Feeling Characteristics
Step imaginatively into the sculpture. How do you feel within its form? Use color to express the feelings or moods in a color sketch.
Example: Stepping into this form, I feel pensive gravity—a violet, spiritual depth. The sensation is painstaking, as if every thought must be wrestled into being. There's dissatisfaction here, a grappling with questions that have no easy answers. The feeling is self-interrogative, turning inward with relentless scrutiny. This is not peaceful meditation but effortful inner work, the kind that furrows the brow and tenses every fiber of being.
Color sketch by Flavius
Stage 4: Essence and Identity
Let the sculpture speak for itself. What does it reveal about its nature? This stage may spark creative responses—a poem, movement, revelation.
Example:
Violet
by Flavius
I'm inwardly frowning
to a tense gravity--
a muscular tension.
Suddenly I enter
a deep violet,
the immeasurable
by which everything
is measured.
by Flavius
I'm inwardly frowning
to a tense gravity--
a muscular tension.
Suddenly I enter
a deep violet,
the immeasurable
by which everything
is measured.
The Thinker
by Sahya
Your withering stare
bounces back into your self
on which you fix
your thought's rays
You are arrested
in cross-examination
Holding, gripping
with dissatisfaction
Carving, burning,
searching for truth.
by Sahya
Your withering stare
bounces back into your self
on which you fix
your thought's rays
You are arrested
in cross-examination
Holding, gripping
with dissatisfaction
Carving, burning,
searching for truth.
The Thinker embodies the demands of consciousness—the burden and nobility of reflective thought. It tells me: awareness requires effort, truth demands struggle, and thinking deeply means carrying weight that cannot be set down.
Your Art Journal Practice
This final stage transforms the artwork into a teacher. Don't force interpretation—let it emerge. You might write, draw, dance, or simply sit in understanding. Your creative response becomes dialogue with the work.
References
1) Rilke on Rodin's The Thinker
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45605/pg45605-images.html#:~:text=He%20made%20the%20figures%20and,his%20veins%20has%20become%20brain
2) Wikipedia art description
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker
3) Blog post on Calder with art observation
https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/calders-playful-spirit-the-fun-side-of-serious-art
Images
https://ar.inspiredpencil.com/pictures-2023/the-thinker-auguste-rodin
Your Art Journal Practice
This final stage transforms the artwork into a teacher. Don't force interpretation—let it emerge. You might write, draw, dance, or simply sit in understanding. Your creative response becomes dialogue with the work.
References
1) Rilke on Rodin's The Thinker
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45605/pg45605-images.html#:~:text=He%20made%20the%20figures%20and,his%20veins%20has%20become%20brain
2) Wikipedia art description
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker
3) Blog post on Calder with art observation
https://www.flavius-pisapia.com/blog/calders-playful-spirit-the-fun-side-of-serious-art
Images
https://ar.inspiredpencil.com/pictures-2023/the-thinker-auguste-rodin
- Published on
Modernist Sculpture and Nature's Artistry
Constantin Brancusi introduced direct carving in the early twentieth century. Direct carving transformed sculpture practice, as it removed earlier phases from the process. It replaces the act of copying the original model to the larger block. This involves clay modeling or pre-carving plaster. The artist works without external reference points and intermediary assistants. Instead, the sculptor gets to engage directly with the block, finding her way to the form. The artist immerses herself in the process. And imprints something of her personality into the final work. This variety of expression enabled modernists like Henry Moore and Jean Arp to bring their unique visions to life in the block.
Constantin Brancusi introduced direct carving in the early twentieth century. Direct carving transformed sculpture practice, as it removed earlier phases from the process. It replaces the act of copying the original model to the larger block. This involves clay modeling or pre-carving plaster. The artist works without external reference points and intermediary assistants. Instead, the sculptor gets to engage directly with the block, finding her way to the form. The artist immerses herself in the process. And imprints something of her personality into the final work. This variety of expression enabled modernists like Henry Moore and Jean Arp to bring their unique visions to life in the block.
Barbara Hepworth with The Cosdon Head, 1949. The Hepworth Photograph Collection Courtesy Bowness. Photograph: Hans Wild (1)
Direct Carving: Transforming Stone into Art
"I rarely draw what I see – I draw what I feel in my body." Barbara Hepworth 1966 (Via Tate UK)
Direct carving allows more than a deep understanding of the material. It also allows the artist to put their personal stamp on it, making the art one of a kind. The in-the-moment process makes the stone expressive. And perhaps shaping the artist at the same time. Barbara Hepworth adopted this direct carving technique. She approaches the form from within, rather than an outer reference point. (2) In the article from Tate UK, Hepworth speaks of her experiences of “figure and landscape" — in connection to form. In Mother and Child (1934), for example, two forms are placed in warm and moving relationship. Their curves model a human gesture of embrace and protection. Simultaneously, the non-figurative work embodies landscape elements, perhaps hills underneath a sky.
Mother and Child, 1934, Tate Gallery, London (3)
Why is Human Experience Important in Art Forms?
Capturing inner experience in one’s chosen material differs across artistic disciplines. A painter might focus on color mood. A writer will use description to evoke atmosphere. A composer may receive a musical theme while strolling through the woods. Direct carving requires of the artist to be true to the nature of the materials. Its properties, color, and surface, while bringing out its inherent beauty. Hepworth’s contribution was piercing the block, pioneering the void in the mass. Her use of a round negative space in a flat slab in Single Form, for example. Enhanced with surface markings and rounded edges, it transports the viewer to a landscape, time of day; or it may evoke a personal response. Observing its curved edges, the viewer may feel into its delicately sensual movement.
A Timeless Sculpture Philosophy
Hepworth dedicated her time to wood, stone and plaster to the point of understanding them from the inside out. With direct carving, she connected the forms with her artistic experiences. Whether native landscapes or the soul-scapes of motherhood. All while remaining true to the materials.
The plaster for Single Form at the Morris Singer foundry. Photograph by Morgan-Wells (4)
Art Observation in 4 Stages of Hepworth's Single Form
Single Form, 1961-4, bronze, 21 feet in height (6.4 metres), United Nations Building, New York.
Physical characteristics
This tall, slender plaster form evokes a smooth, weathered pebble. An elliptical void pierces the upper left, while organic curves balance against four straight edges. Three incised lines traverse the surface, creating measured proportions. A dotted texture across the flat planes enlivens the form, catching light and adding tactile depth to Hepworth's elegant composition.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Energy characteristics
The form tapers at its base, creating an imposing, upward thrust that commands attention. Yet its shallow profile and absorbing void evoke stillness and quietude—a contemplative pause. This serene quality finds contrast in the animated, dotted surface texture, which seems to dance and bubble with unexpected energy across the stone-like planes.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Feeling characteristics
Harmony of shapes
Perspective
Abstraction
Unity
Perspective
Abstraction
Unity
Fragmented, Intellectual
Meetings, Cheerful
Starry
Moon at night
Meetings, Cheerful
Starry
Moon at night
Color sketch by Flavius
Color sketch by Sahya
Essence and Identity
Harmony Reconstructed
by Flavius
Unity in division
Harmony of forms
Deflated
But imposingly loud.
by Flavius
Unity in division
Harmony of forms
Deflated
But imposingly loud.
The Face
by Sahya
I look at the slate
Which stares back at me
A tablet with markings
And a round window
Three lines mark
Body, Soul, and Spirit
This is a screen, a door
A veil
Revealing what our world
Is made of.
by Sahya
I look at the slate
Which stares back at me
A tablet with markings
And a round window
Three lines mark
Body, Soul, and Spirit
This is a screen, a door
A veil
Revealing what our world
Is made of.
References:
1. Barbara Hepworth with The Cosdon Head, 1949. The Hepworth Photograph Collection Courtesy Bowness. Photograph: Hans Wild www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-st-ives-became-barbara-hepworth-s-spiritual-home/
2. "I rarely draw what I see – I draw what I feel in my body." Barbara Hepworth 1966 —Via Tate UK
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/20/figure-and-landscape-barbara-hepworths-phenomenology-of-perception#none
3. Barbara Hepworth on motherhood, Mother and Child, 1934, Tate Gallery, London
https://blog.fabrics-store.com/2022/03/13/making-it-work-barbara-hepworth-on-motherhood/
4. The plaster for Single Form at the Morris Singer foundry. Photograph by Morgan-Wells
https://barbarahepworth.org.uk/commissions/list/single-form.html
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A six-piece sculpture collection by Flavius Pisapia
The Double Bent Plane as Sculptural-Spiritual Element
In this sculpture series, I have made extensive use of the double bent plane as a sculptural element. The double bent plane represents a three-dimensional geometric form that Rudolf Steiner identified as having profound spiritual significance for understanding the human condition. It consists of two curved surfaces that bend in opposite directions, creating a complex spatial relationship that mirrors the forces acting upon humanity. In Steiner's cosmology, this form geometrically embodies the human being's position between opposing spiritual forces—Lucifer (upward-tending, spiritual excess) and Ahriman (downward-tending, materialistic excess). Christ represents the perfect balance point, and the human being strives to find this center (1). As I work with the opposing curves, I experience how they create a dynamic equilibrium that becomes both an artistic exercise and a meditative practice, embodying how we navigate between these polarities in our quest for wholeness. I see the balancing principle as the Christ / Logos with its three impulses: Truth, Health, and Selflessness.
The Double Bent Plane as Sculptural-Spiritual Element
In this sculpture series, I have made extensive use of the double bent plane as a sculptural element. The double bent plane represents a three-dimensional geometric form that Rudolf Steiner identified as having profound spiritual significance for understanding the human condition. It consists of two curved surfaces that bend in opposite directions, creating a complex spatial relationship that mirrors the forces acting upon humanity. In Steiner's cosmology, this form geometrically embodies the human being's position between opposing spiritual forces—Lucifer (upward-tending, spiritual excess) and Ahriman (downward-tending, materialistic excess). Christ represents the perfect balance point, and the human being strives to find this center (1). As I work with the opposing curves, I experience how they create a dynamic equilibrium that becomes both an artistic exercise and a meditative practice, embodying how we navigate between these polarities in our quest for wholeness. I see the balancing principle as the Christ / Logos with its three impulses: Truth, Health, and Selflessness.
Truth in Relation to the Double Bent Plane
The hyperboloid, or double bent plane, represents a profound mathematical truth with deep implications for human understanding. Through my practice, I've learned that it's a ruled surface that can be generated entirely by straight lines moving through space, containing two families of straight lines that intersect to create the curved surface. When I worked with clay exercises exploring this form, I experienced firsthand this remarkable property—how opposing forces create unity, how straight lines representing linear, rigid structure generate a curved surface representing organic, flowing form. This principle connects to the Christ impulse of truth, revealing through my hands how the human being can bridge material and spiritual realities, finding the point where mathematical precision and living wisdom unite.
Health in Relation to the Double Bent Plane
The double bent plane embodies health as humanity's living, dynamic process of finding balance. Just as this geometric form holds two opposing curves in perfect tension, I've discovered that human health requires ongoing navigation between the Luciferic pull toward spiritual dissociation and the Ahrimanic pull toward material hardening. As I sculpt these forms, I feel the Christ impulse of health working as the great harmonizer, showing humanity the middle path where these forces meet in creative equilibrium. Working with the double bent plane through sculpture has trained my human capacity to hold complexity, work creatively with opposition, and find the living center that represents our true nature between extremes.
Selflessness in Relation to the Double Bent Plane
The double bent plane reveals the profound nature of human transformation through the Christ impulse of selflessness. Each curve bends away from its natural tendency, and in my sculptural practice, I experience how humanity must learn to navigate between Luciferic self-aggrandizement and Ahrimanic self-negation. Through patient work with this form, I've learned that true human form emerges only when we surrender and sacrifice our pull toward either one-sidedness to create something greater—a balanced, integrated self. This has taught me that the human path is not about eliminating our dual nature but about its transformation, where individual will learns to find the Christ center, creating wholeness from the tension between spiritual aspiration and earthly embodiment.
The hyperboloid, or double bent plane, represents a profound mathematical truth with deep implications for human understanding. Through my practice, I've learned that it's a ruled surface that can be generated entirely by straight lines moving through space, containing two families of straight lines that intersect to create the curved surface. When I worked with clay exercises exploring this form, I experienced firsthand this remarkable property—how opposing forces create unity, how straight lines representing linear, rigid structure generate a curved surface representing organic, flowing form. This principle connects to the Christ impulse of truth, revealing through my hands how the human being can bridge material and spiritual realities, finding the point where mathematical precision and living wisdom unite.
Health in Relation to the Double Bent Plane
The double bent plane embodies health as humanity's living, dynamic process of finding balance. Just as this geometric form holds two opposing curves in perfect tension, I've discovered that human health requires ongoing navigation between the Luciferic pull toward spiritual dissociation and the Ahrimanic pull toward material hardening. As I sculpt these forms, I feel the Christ impulse of health working as the great harmonizer, showing humanity the middle path where these forces meet in creative equilibrium. Working with the double bent plane through sculpture has trained my human capacity to hold complexity, work creatively with opposition, and find the living center that represents our true nature between extremes.
Selflessness in Relation to the Double Bent Plane
The double bent plane reveals the profound nature of human transformation through the Christ impulse of selflessness. Each curve bends away from its natural tendency, and in my sculptural practice, I experience how humanity must learn to navigate between Luciferic self-aggrandizement and Ahrimanic self-negation. Through patient work with this form, I've learned that true human form emerges only when we surrender and sacrifice our pull toward either one-sidedness to create something greater—a balanced, integrated self. This has taught me that the human path is not about eliminating our dual nature but about its transformation, where individual will learns to find the Christ center, creating wholeness from the tension between spiritual aspiration and earthly embodiment.
"The Representative of Humanity", wood sculpture, 1915-1922, Goetheanum, Switzerland, by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon (2)
Rudolf Steiner's "The Representative of Humanity" is a monumental wood sculpture created between 1915 and 1922, which depicts Christ standing between the forces of Lucifer (over expansive, spiritual forces) and Ahriman (too contractive, material forces), representing humanity's struggle for balance. The original wood carving was saved from the 1922 fire at the first Goetheanum, and can be seen today at the second Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. The sculpture's creation involved Steiner and English sculptor Edith Maryon, who worked from numerous preliminary models to develop the final design.
A Journey of Self Transformation - Sculpture Series
This profound sculpture series traces the essential stages of human consciousness and growth, from the first spark of awareness to the full flowering of personal manifestation. Each piece serves as both an individual meditation and part of a larger narrative about human becoming—offering mirror and map for the inner journey we all navigate.
This profound sculpture series traces the essential stages of human consciousness and growth, from the first spark of awareness to the full flowering of personal manifestation. Each piece serves as both an individual meditation and part of a larger narrative about human becoming—offering mirror and map for the inner journey we all navigate.
Self Aware
Self Aware, Ceramic, Graphite, Marble
At The Cube Gallery, Goa, 2025
The opening awakening—consciousness turns inward and recognizes itself for the first time. Energy gathers and moves upward, creating an inner space of dynamic observation. This foundational piece captures the quiet power of first awareness, the genesis of all personal transformation.
Gathering together,
Seeing the moving parts,
Focusing on aspects of myself.
Gathering together,
Seeing the moving parts,
Focusing on aspects of myself.
Self Interest
Self Interest, Ceramic, Graphite, Marble
At The Cube Gallery, Goa, 2025
The stirring of desire and curiosity. Moving from dispersion to focus, from weakness to strength, this sculpture cascades diagonally with concentrated energy on the left dispersing to the right. The newly awakened consciousness begins to explore its wants, needs, and attractions—developing the essential motivation that drives all growth.
I take interest in myself:
From weakness strength,
From dispersion focus.
I take interest in myself:
From weakness strength,
From dispersion focus.
Self Potential
Self Potential, Ceramic, Graphite, Marble
At The Cube Gallery, Goa, 2025
The vast landscape of possibility unfolds. Larger than life, this piece embodies spring-like energy held in potential—a dance of yin and yang, negative and positive space. It captures the recognition of untapped capabilities, the seeds of what we might become waiting to unfold.
Larger than life,
Yin yang,
Potential movement,
Spring-like action.
Larger than life,
Yin yang,
Potential movement,
Spring-like action.
Self Power
Self Power, Ceramic, Graphite, Marble
At The Cube Gallery, Goa, 2025
Potential crystallizes into capability. Coming together in the middle, heavier at the bottom and lighter at the top, this sculpture marks the transformation from possibility to strength. It captures the moment when confidence emerges, when we become aware of our boundaries and gain the ability to shape our reality.
Gathering -
From the boundaries.
Upward jump, over
The inner space.
Gathering -
From the boundaries.
Upward jump, over
The inner space.
Self Rhythm
Self Rhythm, Ceramic, Graphite, Marble
At The Cube Gallery, Goa, 2025
The discovery of personal flow—that unique cadence and natural balance. Firmly rooted in a triangular form, this piece rises with pyramid energy, embodying confident rhythm. It represents the harmony between inner force and outer expression, when power is channeled through wisdom.
Firmly rooted,
I move strongly -
Upwards.
Towards the One.
Firmly rooted,
I move strongly -
Upwards.
Towards the One.
Self Manifest
Self Manifest, Ceramic, Graphite, Marble
At The Cube Gallery, Goa, 2025
The full flowering of the journey. Half grounded, half in space, this final sculpture moves like a wave — strong, symmetrical, expansive yet contractive. It embodies the ultimate expression of an integrated self, where awareness, desire, potential, power, and rhythm unite in authentic manifestation. Spirit in matter.
Spoken from
Beyond space
Landing ribbon
Manifesting.
Spoken from
Beyond space
Landing ribbon
Manifesting.
References:
1. "The Language of Form", Gertraud Goodwin
2. The Representative of Humanity, Anthroposophy.eu
1. "The Language of Form", Gertraud Goodwin
2. The Representative of Humanity, Anthroposophy.eu
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You could say the sculptors who were redefining modern sculpture in the twentieth century were striving on one level or the other for a blurring of boundaries between art and life, art and function, art and environment. As opposed to traditional static and solid form, sculpture began to move or invite people to walk around and within it. With Isamu Noguchi it was no different. With his environmental design, whether parks or gardens, he transformed how we experience the relationship between sculpture, nature, and human activity.
Breaking the Boundaries of Traditional Sculpture
Noguchi's vision extended far beyond sculpture as an insular object asserting itself in space. While traditional sculpture might express inner forces pushing outward–such as his bas-relief News (1940)–his environmental creations worked through the careful arrangement of elements that formed a cohesive whole. As land and conceptual art, Noguchi's designs ask of sculpture, why confine art to objects that “close off” from the viewer and have a separate existence? Sculpted spaces included landscape and the people moving through it, becoming part of its meaning.
Breaking the Boundaries of Traditional Sculpture
Noguchi's vision extended far beyond sculpture as an insular object asserting itself in space. While traditional sculpture might express inner forces pushing outward–such as his bas-relief News (1940)–his environmental creations worked through the careful arrangement of elements that formed a cohesive whole. As land and conceptual art, Noguchi's designs ask of sculpture, why confine art to objects that “close off” from the viewer and have a separate existence? Sculpted spaces included landscape and the people moving through it, becoming part of its meaning.
Isamu Noguchi, nilufar, designers (1)
California Scenario Garden, hiddenca (2)
California Scenario Garden
Isamu Noguchi's California Scenario forms an anchor point in the heart of Costa Mesa's bustling commercial district, a sanctuary emerging like a meditation carved from stone and earth. Making space for spirit between towering office buildings, this 1.6-acre sculptural garden, completed in 1980, is far more than mere landscaping—it becomes a distillation of California's geological soul.
The garden unfolds in a series of interconnected spaces, each element precisely positioned yet appearing as natural as wind-carved canyons. Water moves through this landscape with purposeful grace, cascading down the angular planes of the "Water Source" pyramid. Nearby, the "Water Use" basin collects this flow in a perfect circle, its dark surface reflecting sky and stone.
California Scenario, South Coast Plaza (3)
California Scenario, South Coast Plaza (4)
The "Desert Land" section rises like a miniature mountain range, its carefully graded slopes and strategically placed boulders evoking the austere beauty of the Mojave. Here, Noguchi understood that desert isn't merely an absence of water, but a presence unto itself.
Throughout the garden, the interplay between the organic and geometric creates a visual tension that keeps the eye engaged. Smooth concrete forms a curve against rough stone surfaces. The result is neither purely natural nor entirely artificial, but something altogether new—a translation of California's diverse geography into the language of modern sculpture, where visitors can experience the conceptual essence of mountains, deserts, and coastlines without traveling beyond the boundaries of a shopping plaza.
California Scenario, South Coast Plaza (5)
California Scenario, South Coast Plaza (6)
The Philosophy Behind the Forms
When Noguchi studied with Constantin Brancusi for five months, he came to understand sculpture on a deeper level, that sculpture is fundamentally "about a lifelong search for yourself.” While Brancusi saw organic abstraction as a distilling of form to its essence, Noguchi saw his sculptural forms as extensions of natural surroundings, arranging and shaping space as deliberately as creating individual art pieces.
From the book, “Abstraction Matters: Contemporary Sculptors in Their Own Words,” Noguchi’s words are a revelation of form and meaning, connected with essence and movement. (2) “What Brancusi does with a bird or the Japanese do with a garden is to take the essence of nature and distil it – just as a poet does. That’s what I’m interested in – the poetic translation […] the fundamental question of art which is for me the meaning of a thing, the evocative essence which moves us. (Apostolos-Cappadona and Altshuler eds. 1994, 131–2)”
Time as a Sculptural Element
What makes these gardens particularly remarkable is their embrace of time and change as essential sculptural elements.
- Interplay of carefully placed stones with growing vegetation
- Changing patterns of light and shadow throughout the day
- Accumulation of fallen leaves or snow
- All contribute to an ever-shifting composition.
Weather becomes a collaborator, seasons provide rhythm, and human use—the paths worn by visitors, the spaces where people naturally gather—becomes part of the work itself. In this way, he created living sculptures that remain vital and surprising—never quite the same from one visit to the next.
A View from Above
From a bird's-eye perspective, Noguchi's gardens reveal another layer of meaning.
- How do objects and moving bodies form space?
- What patterns emerge from repeating structures and people's wandering paths?
By opening up sculptural form and laying it out on the landscape, he created an opening for what he called the "supersensory"—allowing time itself to "look in" and "drop in" on the scene. The cosmos and earth peer in on human activity, creating a dialogue between the intimate and the infinite.
A Living Legacy
Isamu Noguchi's gardens stand as perhaps his most profound artistic achievement, representing the full realization of an environmental philosophy developed throughout his career. These carefully orchestrated landscapes moved beyond traditional notions of sculpture as isolated objects, instead proposing that art could be integrated into the very fabric of human experience.
California Scenario, South Coast Plaza (7)
Art Observation in 4 Stages of Noguchi's California Scenario, 1980, Costa Mesa CA
Section of the Noguchi Sculpture Garden. Source Orange county insiders.
Physical characteristics
An environment of stones combining geometric with organic shape, cut in the granite ground creating a pathway for shallow water, the whole scene covered in a light tinged with green. A simple hierarchy of heights, with the pyramid tip as the tallest object, while smaller stones scattered in the shallow water are situated between ground and water level. A compression of distance between foreground and pyramid base exaggerates the perspective.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Energy characteristics
A focal point to the scene, the pyramid possesses a concentration of form, which seems to expel from itself a flow (the waterway). The waterway channel appears crowded, like a partial obstruction in the energy. The pyramid gives a human presence to the landscape – bestowing it with thought and creativity. There's an overall sense of frozen, stagnant, calm; as well as a burst of energy on the right side and a primal life in the greenish atmosphere.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Feeling characteristics
- Polarity
- Mystery
- Antiquity
- Somber
- Serious
- Desolate
- Grief
- Eerie
- Barren
- Stark
- Meditative
- Emptiness
Color sketch by Flavius
Color sketch by Sahya
Essence and Identity
The Gift
by Flavius
In a hierarchy of heights
Polarity comes to meet me
Bringing somber mystery
Desolate antiquity
Life and death.
by Flavius
In a hierarchy of heights
Polarity comes to meet me
Bringing somber mystery
Desolate antiquity
Life and death.
Flowing Out
by Sahya
Primal scene
The meditator sits on the riverbank
Like a flame that sees You Everywhere
Below and above the Earth
And in its skin
I can pour myself out in this place
Seeming so hard and bare.
by Sahya
Primal scene
The meditator sits on the riverbank
Like a flame that sees You Everywhere
Below and above the Earth
And in its skin
I can pour myself out in this place
Seeming so hard and bare.
References
Images
- Beyond the Pedestal: Isamu Noguchi and the Borders of Sculpture: https://www.portlandmuseum.org/noguchi#:~:text=Isamu%20Noguchi%20believed%20that%20the,architects%2C%20inventors%2C%20and%20performers
- Abstraction in Noguchi's Own Words: In Search of Permanence: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350740687_Abstraction_in_Noguchi's_Own_Words_In_Search_of_Permanence
- Enter into the mindful aesthetic world of Isamu Noguchi: https://www.shiftlondon.org/features/the-mindful-aesthetic-world-of-isamu-noguchi-2/
Images
- 1 https://nilufar.com/designers/noguchi-isamu/
- 2 https://hiddenca.com/noguchi-garden/
- 3-7 https://www.southcoastplaza.com/theedit/2016/12/noguchi-garden/
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The approach that changed what it meant to be an artist.
"Above all, art should be fun." – Alexander Calder
At a time when sculpture continued to be carrying traditions of serious art, while other arts like painting were undergoing experiments, Alexander Calder brought a breath of fresh air – literally – into sculpture, by giving it lightness and making it move.
The definition of sculpture as a static and monochromatic form with weight, being carved or modelled, was expanded through Calder's breakthrough mobiles in particular. His early work Cirque Calder echoes in other free floating mobiles. This whimsical redefinition of sculpture has a childlike appeal while simultaneously engaging the engineer or art historian in its complex spatial relationships and kinetic principles. How can something be so delightful to a child and complex enough to be appreciated by an adult? This paradox of serious play runs through Calder's work and indeed flows over from the artist's personality.
By the 20th century artists were no longer interested in merely copying nature. Calder, influenced by the Surreal and Dada movements, was questioning what it truly meant to be an artist. Instead of being the tortured, brooding type who suffers for their art, Calder seemed to be asking, "what if we had fun with this?" As Alan Watts put it, "Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun."
"Above all, art should be fun." – Alexander Calder
At a time when sculpture continued to be carrying traditions of serious art, while other arts like painting were undergoing experiments, Alexander Calder brought a breath of fresh air – literally – into sculpture, by giving it lightness and making it move.
The definition of sculpture as a static and monochromatic form with weight, being carved or modelled, was expanded through Calder's breakthrough mobiles in particular. His early work Cirque Calder echoes in other free floating mobiles. This whimsical redefinition of sculpture has a childlike appeal while simultaneously engaging the engineer or art historian in its complex spatial relationships and kinetic principles. How can something be so delightful to a child and complex enough to be appreciated by an adult? This paradox of serious play runs through Calder's work and indeed flows over from the artist's personality.
By the 20th century artists were no longer interested in merely copying nature. Calder, influenced by the Surreal and Dada movements, was questioning what it truly meant to be an artist. Instead of being the tortured, brooding type who suffers for their art, Calder seemed to be asking, "what if we had fun with this?" As Alan Watts put it, "Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun."
The Poetry of Movement: When Sculptures Laugh and Dance
Calder figured out something that had somehow escaped artists for thousands of years: freeing sculpture from gravity and exploring changing relationships in space. He trades grandeur and importance for humor with a hidden intricate structure. His work transformed galleries from quiet museums into playgrounds where art could dance and laugh.
Take “Lobster Trap and Fish Tail”—even the name sounds like something a kid might come up with during a beach vacation. But here's the point of interest: while the title makes you smile, the object itself is moving around with all the grace of an underwater ballet. The Davis Museum describes its movements as mimicking "the soft undulations of the ocean floor," (1)
The whole setup is wonderfully contradictory. The engineering is precise and sophisticated (this sophisticated mechanism doesn't just happen by accident), but the effect is pure whimsy. It's like Calder was secretly a rocket scientist who moonlighted as a children's entertainer. While traditional sculptures stood around being serious and weighty, his creations were up there having a party, responding to every little puff of air like they were ticklish.
He borrowed the idea from the solar system—you know, that minor achievement of physics where massive planets somehow manage to dance around in space without crashing into each other. Calder basically said, "I'll have what they're having," and created his own miniature universes where abstract shapes could orbit and play without any of the existential dread.
Calder's fascination with the solar system is recounted in a single nature experience. As this article from The Atlantic describes (2), “Having slept on deck one night, he awoke to see in the sky “a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other.” The astonishing sight “left me with a lasting sensation of the solar system,” he wrote decades later.”
Calder figured out something that had somehow escaped artists for thousands of years: freeing sculpture from gravity and exploring changing relationships in space. He trades grandeur and importance for humor with a hidden intricate structure. His work transformed galleries from quiet museums into playgrounds where art could dance and laugh.
Take “Lobster Trap and Fish Tail”—even the name sounds like something a kid might come up with during a beach vacation. But here's the point of interest: while the title makes you smile, the object itself is moving around with all the grace of an underwater ballet. The Davis Museum describes its movements as mimicking "the soft undulations of the ocean floor," (1)
The whole setup is wonderfully contradictory. The engineering is precise and sophisticated (this sophisticated mechanism doesn't just happen by accident), but the effect is pure whimsy. It's like Calder was secretly a rocket scientist who moonlighted as a children's entertainer. While traditional sculptures stood around being serious and weighty, his creations were up there having a party, responding to every little puff of air like they were ticklish.
He borrowed the idea from the solar system—you know, that minor achievement of physics where massive planets somehow manage to dance around in space without crashing into each other. Calder basically said, "I'll have what they're having," and created his own miniature universes where abstract shapes could orbit and play without any of the existential dread.
Calder's fascination with the solar system is recounted in a single nature experience. As this article from The Atlantic describes (2), “Having slept on deck one night, he awoke to see in the sky “a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other.” The astonishing sight “left me with a lasting sensation of the solar system,” he wrote decades later.”
“Lobster Trap and Fish Tail,” 1939, wire and aluminum, Alexander Calder
The Lasting Legacy: Proof That Fun Isn't the Enemy of Smart
Calder doesn't intimidate or pressure the viewer to be cultured but meets them where they're at. Like all true art, his works reveal you to yourself as much as the art itself. It has a world and dialogue within itself, balancing humor and wit with scientific precision and efficiency. As you approach the object, you approach your response to it. Imagine that! Art that doesn't require a PhD to appreciate, but rewards you with deeper layers if you want to dig in.
In the end, Calder's greatest achievement wasn't just moving sculpture—it was moving people. It might help us feel happy and alive, or spark curiosity. In a world that can be pretty heavy sometimes, it's essential.
“Big Horizontal Red,” 1956. Sheet metal, wire and paint. 15 x 125 x 28 in, Alexander Calder
Art Observation of Alexander Calder’s “Big Horizontal Red,” 1956, in 4 Stages
Physical Characteristics
“Kinetic sculptors incorporated natural movement or mechanical motion into their artworks to explore the passage of time…” (3)
The red mobile, constituted of painted wire and sheet metal, recalls an upside down tree: both organic and as a “mindmap”. Fifteen thin and irregular “leaves” of varying size and shape delicately dangle from above as though on “hangers.” Lines go from thick to thin, reminiscent of branches and twigs. Surfaces decrease in size to tiny pieces, echoing nature’s center-to-periphery metamorphosis in leaf and petal.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Energy Characteristics
The red colour gives off radiating heat, while form wise the line is the still frame and the shards have a spotty, freckled energy, giving the impression of small whirlpools, creating form in motion. Fragmented, sharp, and directional, there is a sense of active tension in movement and space.
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Feeling Characteristics
At first glance, the mobile is elegant, harmonious, even serene, with its beautifully placed organic shapes echoing nature's rhythms. However, staying with the observation longer, the sharp forms and alarming red tell another story. Contractions in fragments are like pockets of anger in space. Speed conjures blades of wrath. Conflict, micro aggression, and anxiety come to the fore all balanced in a uniform structure that moves in the air.
This aspect of encountering Big Horizontal Red connects to the interplay of seriousness and humour in Calder's art and personality. From an article on Calder by Marcia Rackow: “Known for his good spirits and humor, he said he had “a big advantage,” as he was “inclined to be happy by nature.” He was, Osborn wrote, “a lover of fun, full of wit and play, but confronted by things evil he is as grim a battler as one could ask for.”” (4)
Color sketch by Flavius
Color sketch by Sahya
Essence and Identity
"Big Horizontal Red" from 1956 exemplifies Calder's mastery of kinetic sculpture at monumental scale. This impressive mobile stretches over ten feet in length, its crimson sheet metal elements suspended on delicate wire armatures that allow the work to rotate and shift with the slightest air movement. The sculpture's horizontal orientation creates a sense of expansive reach across space, while Calder's signature red paint transforms industrial materials into something both bold and graceful. The interplay between the work's substantial physical presence and its capacity for gentle, unpredictable motion captures the essence of Calder's revolutionary approach to sculpture—making static metal dance in space while maintaining perfect compositional balance through his intuitive understanding of weight, counterweight, and movement.
Migraine
By Flavius
Suspense from above
Cloud of pain, crown of sharp thorns
Freckled headache throbs
By Flavius
Suspense from above
Cloud of pain, crown of sharp thorns
Freckled headache throbs
The Trickster’s Hand
By Sahya
Is this art
Or a dancing crimson heart
Spinning petals like
Ruby singing wings
I think I see you
Spelling wonder and innovation
Arranging colors
Hiding shadows
By Sahya
Is this art
Or a dancing crimson heart
Spinning petals like
Ruby singing wings
I think I see you
Spelling wonder and innovation
Arranging colors
Hiding shadows
References
Images
- Davis Museum https://www1.wellesley.edu/davismuseum/artwork/node/37001
- The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/alexander-calder-jed-perl/609100/
- Christie’s https://www.christies.com/en/stories/modern-and-contemporary-sculpture-guide-ef62979e089045768326fa2a45a74f8
- Terrain Gallery https://terraingallery.org/aesthetic-realism-art-criticism/alexander-calder-art-answers-the-questions-of-our-lives/#:~:text=And%20those%20opposites%2C%20lightness%20and,as%20one%20could%20ask%20for.%E2%80%9D
Images
- Calder with Gamma and Sword Plant https://calder.org/introduction/
- “Big Horizontal Red,” 1956 https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6534271
- Lobster Trap and Fish Tail https://www.artchive.com/artwork/lobster-trap-and-fish-tail-alexander-calder-1939/
- Published on
Social Sculpture Shaped By A New Consciousness
What “Everyone Is An Artist” Actually Means
What did Joseph Beuys mean when he said, “Everyone Is An Artist”? When you hear the word art, you may conjure up images of an exclusive show. You may think of people ambling about an air-conditioned art gallery with wine glasses in hand for the grand opening of a solo show. In view of these images, we wouldn't understand or accept Beuys's message. We wouldn't accept ourselves as artists or even creatives. We were already told who we are from school, college, or the job title we worked hard to gain. What Joseph Beuys was speaking of was potential as reality. The unique creative faculties present within each individual can be discovered and developed to reshape society as a whole in any setting and role. By “artist” he didn't mean something traditional, but an inborn, unique inner flame. Every individual has the potential to form society using their own set of tools.
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” –Goethe. The expansion of art begins in the thought forms of great personalities. They come to fruition to answer a need in the world. Reforming, creative deeds performed on the world stage have a ripple effect. Public actions can serve the individual by holding regenerative space for transformation. The Walker Centre continued reforestation efforts inspired by Beuys's 7000 Oaks. Among many initiatives, Rudolf Steiner's spiritual philosophy started the worldwide Waldorf School movement. Businesses are taking on a performative approach to self-development.
The social problem escalated into a crisis after the devastation of World War II. Humanity suffered a moral blow from the war. Which was succeeded by a safe, but empty, corporate-consumer culture. Numbing modern lifestyle which continues up to this day. It is expressed as meaninglessness of existence in forms of anti-art. Humans began to believe the illusion that meaning can be bought instead of created. In addition, many people work to survive rather than live out their true purpose. Keeping them unfree and miserable in a life that feels like a cage. With comfort and the obligation to focus on survival, the higher nature is muted. Its voice is muffled.
What did Joseph Beuys mean when he said, “Everyone Is An Artist”? When you hear the word art, you may conjure up images of an exclusive show. You may think of people ambling about an air-conditioned art gallery with wine glasses in hand for the grand opening of a solo show. In view of these images, we wouldn't understand or accept Beuys's message. We wouldn't accept ourselves as artists or even creatives. We were already told who we are from school, college, or the job title we worked hard to gain. What Joseph Beuys was speaking of was potential as reality. The unique creative faculties present within each individual can be discovered and developed to reshape society as a whole in any setting and role. By “artist” he didn't mean something traditional, but an inborn, unique inner flame. Every individual has the potential to form society using their own set of tools.
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” –Goethe. The expansion of art begins in the thought forms of great personalities. They come to fruition to answer a need in the world. Reforming, creative deeds performed on the world stage have a ripple effect. Public actions can serve the individual by holding regenerative space for transformation. The Walker Centre continued reforestation efforts inspired by Beuys's 7000 Oaks. Among many initiatives, Rudolf Steiner's spiritual philosophy started the worldwide Waldorf School movement. Businesses are taking on a performative approach to self-development.
The social problem escalated into a crisis after the devastation of World War II. Humanity suffered a moral blow from the war. Which was succeeded by a safe, but empty, corporate-consumer culture. Numbing modern lifestyle which continues up to this day. It is expressed as meaninglessness of existence in forms of anti-art. Humans began to believe the illusion that meaning can be bought instead of created. In addition, many people work to survive rather than live out their true purpose. Keeping them unfree and miserable in a life that feels like a cage. With comfort and the obligation to focus on survival, the higher nature is muted. Its voice is muffled.
Homogenous Infiltration for Grand Piano, by Joseph Beuys at the Pompidou Centre
Self-actualization needs the warmth of social life with individual creativity. How can each person be the creator of his or her reality, rather than a consumer? Life's purpose should be at the forefront of personal and the collective consciousness. But often becomes no more than a background whisper.
Joseph Beuys was inspired by social reformer, architect, and esotericist Rudolf Steiner and his ideas for social renewal. Steiner envisaged a threefold social order to realize this cultural need of human beings is to self-actualize in three spheres of culture, law, or economy. Beuys also drew inspiration from nature observation. Particularly the beehive’s structure and movement, its warmth of collaboration: “fraternity, which contains the concept of warmth within it.” (1) The ideas and materials juxtaposed in social sculpture evolving organically from the human spirit into society. Beuys's public actions were performances for lasting social change.
Joseph Beuys saw art everywhere he went. His deeper seeing enabled his socially regenerative art, which celebrates the individual's capacity for social renewal. Wherever a creative individual goes, is where culture follows. Art is not confined to specific life paths, settings, and media, but can appear anywhere. In as much as a lawyer or economist has culture (creative ideas), they are also artists. Art provides the process of giving birth to one's higher nature in a Threefold Society.
Anthropocracy, Bellia's Innovative Contribution To Social Sculpture
Italian inventor, mathematician, and social reformer, Nicolò G. Bellia, further elaborated the social question. He drew attention to our current thinking around the nature of work. The State posits the right to work, when it's the right to life that, Bellia suggests, should be prioritized. Through a reformation involving several social reforms.
Bellia used his creative genius to solve the economic puzzle and enable society to thrive as a whole. People can uphold the right to life of every human being through Bellia's idea of “unconditional basic income.” This frees their time to pursue their life purpose in collaboration with and of benefit to society. “Whoever has a moral, cultural, or spiritual desire will do anything to pursue her goals and her voice will be as powerful as thunder. Nowadays, that voice is simply a lament because the main concerns of the individual are related to surviving (…) How can the individual pursue any other goal if the first thing she has to think about is her own survival?” (2)
Anthropocracy’s Four Pillars
1. General unconditional basic income as right to life
2. Monetary mass monthly deduction, so that money stops being a means of power over others and starts circulating abundantly in society.
3. Election of judges, right to justice, and safety.
4. Digital currency. Abstract money without a physical basis. But based on the economic production of the country.
Italian inventor, mathematician, and social reformer, Nicolò G. Bellia, further elaborated the social question. He drew attention to our current thinking around the nature of work. The State posits the right to work, when it's the right to life that, Bellia suggests, should be prioritized. Through a reformation involving several social reforms.
Bellia used his creative genius to solve the economic puzzle and enable society to thrive as a whole. People can uphold the right to life of every human being through Bellia's idea of “unconditional basic income.” This frees their time to pursue their life purpose in collaboration with and of benefit to society. “Whoever has a moral, cultural, or spiritual desire will do anything to pursue her goals and her voice will be as powerful as thunder. Nowadays, that voice is simply a lament because the main concerns of the individual are related to surviving (…) How can the individual pursue any other goal if the first thing she has to think about is her own survival?” (2)
Anthropocracy’s Four Pillars
1. General unconditional basic income as right to life
2. Monetary mass monthly deduction, so that money stops being a means of power over others and starts circulating abundantly in society.
3. Election of judges, right to justice, and safety.
4. Digital currency. Abstract money without a physical basis. But based on the economic production of the country.
7000 Eichen Joseph Beuys
Joseph Beuys's 7000 Oaks: Healing Forest Monuments
Beuys conceived of 7000 Oaks as an act of societal and environmental healing. The project was titled “Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung” ("City Forestation Instead of City Administration"). It was a direct critique of a sterile, bureaucratic system. Planting trees was a literal and symbolic act. It injected life, oxygen, and ecological health back into a wounded urban and social environment.
Beuys explains the three stages of comparing the stone and the tree side by side. Stone first dominates the six and seven-year-old oaks. After a few years they are balanced. Finally, the stone sits at the foot of the oak after twenty to thirty years’ time. He states, “My point with these seven thousand trees was that each would be a monument, consisting of a living part, the live tree, changing all the time, and a crystalline mass, maintaining its shape, size, and weight. This stone can be transformed only by taking from it, when a piece splinters off, say, never by growing. By placing these two objects side by side, the proportionality of the monument's two parts will never be the same.” (3)
Symbolically, the monument is designed to enliven human consciousness. The project is an inspiring image - replicable around the world - invoking real social change.
7000 Oaks New York Joseph Beuys, 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks), inaugurated at Documenta in 1982. © Joseph Beuys/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York
Art Observation of Joseph Beuys's “7000 Oaks,” 1982, in 4 Stages
Physical Characteristics
The monument consists of a living and lifeless object placed side by side. The one has color, is cylindrical, tall, extending vertically and horizontally, has organic texture and lines. The lines are thick to thin. The other object is a light gray, rectangular, and vertical
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Energy Characteristics
● Life – Lifeless
● Life cycles – No cycles of life
● Time – Timeless
● Active – Reactive
● Expands – Contracts
● Levity – Gravity
● Moving – Static
● Warm – Cold
Drawing by Flavius
Drawing by Sahya
Feeling Characteristics
● Abundance – Lack
● Generosity – Miserly
● Inviting – Rejecting
● Connecting – Disconnecting
● Joy – Grief
● Community – Isolation
Color sketch by Flavius
Color sketch by Sahya
Essence and Identity
Nature's Riddle
By Flavius
You are a riddle
The way you relate to each other.
You Plants thrive
On the Rock’s lifelessness.
You Rocks are exalted
In the life of Plants.
You Plants grow,
Out of the Timeless.
You Rocks evolve,
In Time’s living dimension.
United By Contrasts
By Sahya
Oak: Body Flowing
Through the years I've stood
Tall, strong, immovably rooted
Yet ruffled and swayed by winds
And changed by the Seasons.
Laughing with lively little companions.
Impermeable yet flowing
My form preserved from within
Basalt: Body Porous
Through the years I've stood
Short, rigid, immovable but chipping away Unnoticeably fragile.
Supporting hand or leg that would lean
On my surfaces.
Impermeable yet breathing in light-filled spaces
Stored in my crystalline body porous.
References
1. Joseph Beuys The Expanded Concept of Art: Heiner Stachelhaus https://www.neugraphic.com/beuys/beuys-text8.html
2. Share The Wealth, Anthropocracy, Bellia https://masternewmedia.com/share-the-wealth-utopia-or-opportunity-anthropocracy-an-interview-with-nicol-c3-b2-bellia-238db6cb5fa9
3. 7000 Oaks Essay by Lynne Cooke with statements by Joseph Beuys https://web.archive.org/web/20090408043007/http://www.diacenter.org/ltproj/7000/essay.html
4. https://www.stazioneceleste.it/insight/antropocrazia/Bellia_Verso-l-Antropocrazia.pdf
5. https://www.amazon.com/Verso-la-Antropocrazia/dp/B0DS9WQL4B
1. Joseph Beuys The Expanded Concept of Art: Heiner Stachelhaus https://www.neugraphic.com/beuys/beuys-text8.html
2. Share The Wealth, Anthropocracy, Bellia https://masternewmedia.com/share-the-wealth-utopia-or-opportunity-anthropocracy-an-interview-with-nicol-c3-b2-bellia-238db6cb5fa9
3. 7000 Oaks Essay by Lynne Cooke with statements by Joseph Beuys https://web.archive.org/web/20090408043007/http://www.diacenter.org/ltproj/7000/essay.html
4. https://www.stazioneceleste.it/insight/antropocrazia/Bellia_Verso-l-Antropocrazia.pdf
5. https://www.amazon.com/Verso-la-Antropocrazia/dp/B0DS9WQL4B