Tour Notes – Bronze Casting (Jean Smith)

Rodin – Walking Man

• Our Walking man was cast in bronze in 1906 from an enlargement of Rodin’ clay model (original) which he made from fragments of previous clay models.
• Thought of as the first impressionist sculptor because he eschewed replicating nature or using a photographic style, He also the first Modernist sculptor.
• Sought to show the image’s innerness, emotions, and ideas through dramatic and dynamic poses and slashing, deep modeling and varied surface textures all of which enhance the play of light.
• Sketched everyday people in motion incessantly, gave him an intimate knowledge of human anatomy.  How muscles worked together to accomplish movement.  He had a keen sense of balance-not to keep the statue from falling over, but rather, the balance of the muscles during movement.
• Position yourself like Walking Man.  Note the weight distribution and the position of the legs, and the arm remnants.  Where are you in the stride cycle?

Cholla’s Reducing and Enlarging Machine:

• A mechanical elaborations of the pointing method based on the pantograph that makes proportionally enlarged or reduced duplicates.
• A simple pantograph example is the wall-mounted mirror that advances or retracts to the wall.
• Looks like a lathe with two turntables connected by an arm.  The original sits on one turntable and a plaster or clay blank shaped roughly in the desired shape and size sits on the other turntable.  Because the turntables are connected, the model and blank are always in the same orientation to each other.
• The technician guides a stylus connected to one arm of the pantograph and that movement is transferred to the second arm equipped with a cutting tool.  This transfers a succession of profiles from the model onto the blank. (See www.cantorfoundation.org/resources/reductions-and-enlargements/ for photos.)
• Rodin only made the clay model,  He used an outside firm for this. Our Walking Man is an enlargement of the original clay model.

PATINATION:  Nothing more than accelerated corrosion!

• Bronze is a non-magnetic alloy of at least 90% copper and at least 1% tin.  Lead and other metals can also be added.
• Bronze is naturally golden to deep orange with a low sheen.
  Through the oxidation process, a chemical salt reacts with the bronze to cause a permanent surface color change.
• This can occur naturally, i.e., The Statue of Liberty-copper reacts with the carbonate or chloride sulfate in the air (from sea, air  or acid rain) to change  the copper’s surface green (Verdigris).
• Patination also occurs when the statue is buried in the ground. Different colors result from different chemical salts…Potassium sulfate (also called Potash which is made by soaking plant ashes in water in a pot)=brown to brownish black; Copper=Turquois
• The patina can be sanded off to add highlights in selective areas (see legs, abdomen of Walking Man).

PROCESS:

• Reheat the statue slightly and wax.  When cool, burnish the surface.  Repeat.
• The statue must be washed to rid the surface of acids and salts.  When it is clean the water will sheet off rather than bead up.  Small areas at a time are heated to about 200 degrees with a hand held flame and then painted or sprayed with the chemical salt.
• When the desired color is reached, the chemical is washed off to stop the oxidation.
• The sculptor can recoat with the same or different chemical salt to obtain the desired color.

Tibetan – Yamantaka “Terminator of Death” Embracing Consort

•  The statue was made by the Lost Wax Casting process that was learned or commissioned from Indian, Kashmiri or Nepalese artisans.
• The statue was cast in multiple pieces.  His consort, the jewelry, groups of hands and feet, the images under his feet, the ritual objects held in his hands, the sun pillow and lotus throne were separate castings. Their joinings are usually hidden in drapery folds,  joints or under jewelry.
• These pieces had tangs (prongs).  (These tangs were probably the remnants of the wax tube system that allowed the bronze to be poured in and the displaced air and gases to escape from the mold.)  These tangs fitted into opening in the main body or base of the statue.
• Note the rectangular bronze piece nailed(?) to his back.  The statues’ hollow center often encased a relic, amulet or sutra encased in them.

GILDING:

• Lacquer mixed with the red pigment of cinnabar (a mercury compound) is painted on.
• The statue is heated (probably a small area at a time by a hand held flame) and gold leaf is floated on to it.   To make gold leaf, you beat a piece of gold until it is gossamer thin, hence the term floated.
• Heat causes the mercury in the cinnabar to vaporize and becomes an amalgam(glue) that permanently holds the gold leaf to the bronze.  The red undertone of the cinnabar gives the gold warmth.
• Polychromy can be done by adding pigment to lacquer and animal glue.  This is one way that the colors can be added.
• Coral and turquois would be set into the statue and the statue’s pieces assembled.
• The eyes are added last.  A special ceremony held prior to painting or inserting the eyes is called “Eye Opening”.  At this point the image is real to the initiated.  Eye to eye contact is a politeness as well as a means to establishing the connection between devotee and deity.
• 9 heads:  the center one is Yaman’s  buffalo head that Yamantaka donned so as to scare Yaman  by depicting Death itself and surrounded by 6 wrathful heads.  Above these is a demonic figure. The topmost is Manjusri.
• Each hand of the 34 arms held ritual objects, a few of which remain.
• The 16 feet are stamping out the evils of the world…human, animal, bird and Hindu deities.  Garuda (our primordial nature,) and Ganesh, the elephant headed god that removes obstacles are easy to identify.
• SBMA’s statue is a meditation image used in Tantric (Esoteric) Buddhism.  Tantric Buddhism is esoteric; it is unknowable.  It must be passed from a guru to the aspiring practitioner.  It cannot be learned from books.  Its aim is to  eliminate the 3 poisons of greed, anger and ignorance that keeps one caught up in the ceaseless cycles of rebirth.  With rigorous practice, one can end this cycle in this lifetime!

According to legend,  a venerable old monk was just about to complete his 50 years of meditation in a cave far removed from civilization when rustlers entered his cave with a bison they had stolen  and proceeded to slaughter the bison and eat it.  Then the rustlers noticed the monk. Fearing that he was a witness, they beheaded him.  In his anger, the monk picked up a head and attached it to his body.  He had picked up the bison head.  He was enraged and became Yaman, ” Death”.  He went on a rampage and killed all humans, animals and plant forms in his path. He continued his killing spree into Tibet.  The remaining citizens called upon their patron, Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, for help. Manjusri assumed his wrathful form, Yamantaka the killer of death, to stop him.

Yamantaka went after Yaman who holed up in his stronghold, a tower with 34 windows and 16 doors.  Yamantaka used his 34 arms to block the windows and his 16 legs to stop up the doors.  Yaman finally capitulated after listening to Yamantaka as he preach Buddhist law.  Having no place to go and subject to Yamantaka’s preaching, he repented his cruelties and took an oath to protect all believers of Buddhism.

The wrathful, fierce image of Yamantaka is not to scare. Rather, Yamantaka offers his full fury and power for the meditator to internalize and use to conquer the negatives of  his/her own life.  If the objective of Tantric Buddhism is to complete the path to enlightenment in this lifetime, one is going to need the most powerful aids one can find!