The Capital of the Golden Tower

The Capital of the Golden Tower manifests as an essential form—a perfect hemisphere—familiar within the realms of architecture, mathematics, physics, and philosophy. With this beguiling golden dome, set on top of a jet-black platform, Byars conjures a seldom viewed sight: an aerial perspective of a large-scale tower. The sculpture suggests an architectural fragment, a detached survivor from some larger, hugely ambitious civic project, "decapitated" and placed on a small stage. At the same time, this mysterious object could be read as illusionistic, prompting the viewer to imagine the full-scale monumentality of the tower extending downwards through the platform for several stories below the floor on which the dome perches.

This conceptual work relates to an idea that Byars originated in 1974, when he proposed building a golden needle 333 meters high in the center of Berlin. Marking the beginning of Byars’s use of the tower and the cylinder as "symbols for the human figure and philosophy"[1], he further developed the idea of this tower in numerous conceptual studies throughout his career. Byars envisioned his Golden Tower project as a colossal beacon and oracle that would bridge heaven and earth and unify humanity—a contemporary monument that could surpass the grandeur of the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The work also represents the culmination of Byars’s enduring exploration of the interaction of perfect shapes and immutable materials. His engagement with the notion of "perfection" is further reflected in his frequent use of gold for his sculptures—a material and color which, for him, hinted not only towards the symbolism of the sun and a sense of ancient timelessness, but also became a conduit for thoughts around inner illumination, intellectual knowledge, spiritual experience, and even divine infinity.

[1] James Elliott, "Notes Towards a Biography," in The Perfect Thought: Works by James Lee Byars. Ed. James Elliott. Berkeley, 1990, p. 108.