Headless Humanoid



While reading through Chapter 37 I came across an image that struck me as being very odd. My first thought on Magdalena Abakanowicz’s work, Crowd 1, was that it was very crude, strange sculpting and wasn’t sure how to look at it. I did some research on Abakanowicz thinking I had an idea what this work might be about after seeing that she was Polish and taking note of the dates. After reading some of her history as a survivor of WWII, I realized how important this artwork was for herself and for the audience.
Soviet rule put many restrictions on artwork, but after the death of Stalin, Poland underwent some dramatic cultural shifts that allowed for more artistic freedom. Abakanowicz has been said to be defined by some of her earlier artworks that portray individuality and bright works of personality. However, Abakanowicz took on the art form constructivism, and has stayed with it since.

Works such as Crowd 1 (top) and 80 Backs (above), use headless, sexless forms to generate a mass of non-individualistic beings. The forms are created in an appearance and texture that develop the ideas of nature; mud, earth, etc. These works are also ambiguous, and produce a sense of confusion, and as I saw it, loneliness, oppression, or sadness. There is no single person that stands out, and as much as this mocked socialist views, it can still hold true today. When I look at these images I conjure up phrases like ‘lost in the crowd’ or ‘all alone in a crowded room’. I could never fully understand or appreciate this artwork as an extension of the Soviet oppression in Poland, but I do feel a deep sense of emotion when looking at them. You could almost say there is some kind of horror to these images, and if I stare at them long enough, they kind of scare the crap out of me just imagining this mass of people that are nothing, have no meaning in themselves. If it weren’t for the large numbers of these sculptures, I would see no art in these images, but the quantity of them so similar to each other remind me of how horrible it would be to have to be just like everybody else.