Magdalena Abakanowicz | Explore & Learn | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

As a counterpoint to her figures Abakanowicz presents two monumental heads entitled "Skulls." The anonymity of their forms allows for a variety of interpretations: monolithic boulders, prehistoric fossil remains. Their close ancestors again lie within Abakanowicz’s previous work, in this case a group of large heads made of stuffed and sewn burlap that she created in the mid-1970s. In 1988 she cast ten in a series entitled "Space of Dragon" for the Olympic Park in Seoul, South Korea. Two years later she created the four "Sagacious Heads," which are installed on the Virginia estate of John Kluge. Like "Skulls," these presences hover between realism and abstraction, reflecting elements of human and animal physiognomy rather than recording specific likenesses. This separation of heads and figures may well represent the artist’s pessimistic belief that human beings will never be able to reconcile the contradictory aspects of their nature. “Conceived out of fears about what heads--living heads contain,” Abakanowicz’s heads are “always above or in front of a trunk [body]” and are the first to be “exposed to the unknown.”

Skulls, 1998-99 Installed on the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999 Skull I, Bronze; h. 96 1/8, w 175 5/8, d. 75 in. (244.2 x 446.1 x 190.5 cm) Skull II, Bronze; h. 95 3/4, w. 175 5/8, d. 81 1/8 in. (243.2 x 446.1 x 206.1 cm) Lent by the artist, courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York
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