TITLE: Torso Fragment
ARTIST: Casey Eskridge
DATE: 2005
MATERIALS: Aluminum
DIMENSIONS: 3′ 2″ x 1′ 8″ x 1′ 6″
TYPE: sculpture
Torso Fragment (2005) is a contemporary take on the contrapposto form, an asymmetrical representation of the human figure that results when weight rests primarily on one leg.
Try it yourself. Put most of your weight on your right leg and notice how it shifts your shoulders and hips. Now, try it with your left leg. Artists often use contrapposto to capture dynamism and nuance in the human form.
While contrapposto can be found in art around the world, it became central to the European sculptural and pictorial repertoire during the Renaissance-perhaps most famously embodied in Michelango’s David (1504). This is the tradition from which Herron alum Casey Eskridge draws.
Eskridge’s figure evokes the fragments of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture that so inspired Renaissance artists. But, looking to the contemporary world, he casts his torso in aluminum—that material so essential to modernity—the fabric of airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers, and computers
To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torso_Fragment,
which includes information created by
Herron School of Art and Design and IUPUI Museum Studies faculty and students
in 2009 as part of “A
Survey of IUPUI Public Art.”