Art

 To love a painting is to feel that this presence is… not an object but a voice.

~ Andre Malraux ~

Nuclear Energy

by

Henry Moore

Nuclear Energy by sculptor Henry Moore sits on the exact spot, at the University of Chicago, where members of Manhattan Project, led by Enrico Fermi, on December 2, 1942, oversaw the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, paving the way for controlled nuclear energy.  It was dedicated on December 2, 1967, at exactly 3:36 in the afternoon, on the 25^th anniversary of this momentous moment in history.

I have always appreciated Henry Moore’s large sculptors, and Nuclear Energy is no exception.  Sculpture all but demands more than one view, in order to capture the complete vision of the artist – and this large bronze is no exception.  In fact, the artist said that he hoped people looking at it would:  “go around it, looking out through the open spaces, and that they may have a feeling of being in a cathedral.” Thus, I offer you several views of this piece of art.

Later, regarding the piece, he said:

“It’s a rather strange thing really but I’d already done the idea for this sculpture before Professor McNeill and his colleagues from the University of Chicago came to see me on Sunday morning to tell me about the whole proposition. They told me (which I’d only vaguely known) that Fermi, the Italian nuclear physicist, started or really made the first successful controlled nuclear fission in a temporary building. I think it was a squash court – a wooden building – which from the outside looked entirely unlike where a thing of such an important nature might take place. But this experiment was carried on in secret and it meant that by being successful Man was able to control this huge force for peaceful purposes as well as destructive ones. They came to me to tell me that they thought where such an important event in history took place ought to be marked and they wondered whether I would do a sculpture which would stand on the spot.”

http://physics.uchicago.edu/about/history/manhattan.html

http://www.henry-moore.org/works-in-public/world/united-states-of-america/chicago/university-of-chicago/nuclear-energy-1964-66-lh-526

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

~William Blake ~

Tags: Adán y Eva, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Jean-Baptiste Camille Carot, Rosario de Velasco, Seward Johnson, Unconditional Surrender, Woman with a Pearl

This entry was posted on May 11, 2011 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Art, SlideShow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.