Impact

Artist Michael Ayrton (1921 - 1975)

Date1974

MediumBronze and perspex

Dimensions33.4 x 24.4 x 22.4 cm

ClassificationsSculpture

Credit LineCollection & image © Hugh Lane Gallery. Purchased, 1977. © The Estate of Michael Ayrton.

Object number1434

DescriptionTwo bronze figures stand on either side of a dark sheet of perspex. One figure is a minotaur while the other is a male human. The base is a composite square block, made up of bronze and wood. The perspex sheet runs diagonally across the base.

'To Ayrton, both a captive and a creator of metaphor, he, as well as all mankind, is the Minotaur - half man, half beast - and the maze in which the creature is forever imprisoned is the condition of all human life. The metaphors of this 51-year-old British sculptor, painter, etcher, filmmaker, art historian and novelist incline to be as labyrinthine as the maze itself, which dominates them all. Thus, his most recent bronzes [1970s], in what he calls the "Reflector" series, embody the double concept that man struggles inside the half-protective, half-restrictive maze of his circumstances and, further, that his brain is itself a maze (which it physically much resembles) wherein dwell foreign entities that possess him and drive him - inhabitants which, looking into himself, he endlessly seeks to discover and master.'

Source: Extract from an article in 'Smithsonian' magazine by Alfred Friendly

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