| The Great God Pan | |
|---|---|
_-_27_cropped.jpg) The sculpture atColumbia University in 2014 | |
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| Artist | George Grey Barnard |
| Year | 1898–1899 |
| Medium | Bronze sculpture |
| Subject | Pan |
| Dimensions | 120 cm × 110 cm × 248 cm (49 in × 43 in × 97.5 in) |
| Location | Columbia University, north of College Walk (W. 116th Street), Manhattan,New York City,New York, United States |
| Coordinates | 40°48′29.6″N73°57′45.2″W / 40.808222°N 73.962556°W /40.808222; -73.962556 |
| Owner | Columbia University |
The Great God Pan (cast 1898–1899) is abronze sculpture by American sculptorGeorge Grey Barnard. Since 1907, it has been a fixture of theColumbia University campus inManhattan,New York City.
The sculpture depicts the Greek godPan, a half-man, half-goat deity associated withpastoral living,rustic music, andcarnality. Barnard'sPan is mature and strongly muscled, with a long tangled beard, the ears andcloven hooves of a goat, but no horns or tail. He reclines lazily on his side atop a rock, playing hisreed pipe and dangling one hoof over the edge of the rock.
The bronze sculpture is approximately 49 inches (120 cm) tall, 97.5 inches (248 cm) long, and 43 inches (110 cm) wide. It weighs 4,300 pounds (2,000 kg).[1] Its green granite base is 27.5 inches (70 cm) high, 111.5 inches (283 cm) long, and 45 inches (110 cm) wide.[1]
The inscription on the back reads: "George Grey Barnard – Sculptor".[1] The inscription on the right front corner reads: "Geo. Gray Barnard / Sc. 1899. Cast in one piece by / Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company / Founders New York 1899," and is accompanied by the founder's mark.[1]
Barnard conceived the sculpture in 1894. Originally it was intended to be a fountain sculpture for the courtyard ofThe Dakota, a luxury apartment building onManhattan'sUpper West Side.[a]Alfred Corning Clark, an heir to theSinger Sewing Machine fortune, was Barnard's most important early patron.[3] Clark's father had built The Dakota, and bequeathed the building to Clark's teenage son Edward in 1882.[4] Clark visitedParis in 1895 and commissioned Barnard to proceed with the larger-than-life-size sculpture,[3] but it was never installed at The Dakota.
Alfred Corning Clark died unexpectedly at age 51 in April 1896. His family privately offeredPan to the city in November 1896, to be the centerpiece of a fountain inCentral Park:[3]
The "Pan," which was sketched in Paris, but executed in this country, the plaster cast forming part of the exhibit at Logerot Gardens, was ordered by Mr. Clark for the court of the Dakota flats; but convinced that this superb work of art should belong to the public, he directed his heirs to present it to the city, on the condition that it be placed in Central Park, the Clark estate paying all expenses of casting and erection.[5]
The city's Art Commission approved acceptance of the gift, but the city's Parks Commission spent six months debating the suitability of the work and considering various Central Park locations before declining the Clark family's offer.[6]The New York Evening Telegram published a June 10, 1897, cartoon entitled "The Two Orphans", which lampooned Barnard'sPan andFrederick William MacMonnies'sBacchante and Infant Faun, the latter having been rejected for theBoston Public Library the year before.[6]
Edward Severin Clark, continuing his late father's support for Barnard's work, funded the casting ofPan in bronze and loaned the bronze cast to theMetropolitan Museum of Art and international expositions.[7]
Barnard wanted his plaster sculpture cast in bronze in a single piece—as opposed to assembled from separately-cast pieces—but could not find a French foundry willing to attempt it.[2] French-born Eugene F. Aucaigne, manager of the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company ofMount Vernon, New York, took on the challenge.[2] Following months of preparation and construction of an extremely complex and heavy mold, Aucaigne oversaw the successful casting ofPan in bronze in August 1898.[2] At that time, it was the largest bronze sculpture cast in a single piece in the United States.[2]
Barnard's plaster model for the sculpture's base featured a rock surrounded byreeds andcattails, with a standingcrane to visually balance Pan's head. He also modeledLaughing Faun, a small mask to cover thewater spouts around the sculpture's base.[b] The idea ofPan as a fountain sculpture was abandoned following the Parks Commission's rejection; Barnard's base was never cast in bronze, and the faun masks were not used.[9]
Barnard tried to manipulate the Parks Commission into reconsidering its rejection ofPan, presenting the sculpture's placement in Central Park as afait accompli in a national magazine.[c] When the commission balked at this, a boulder fronting onCentral Park Lake was proposed as an alternative site.[d] The commission dithered for four more years,[e] before again rejectingPan for Central Park.[f]
Barnard included the plaster cast ofPan in his first one-man exhibition, held in November 1898 under the glass roof of the Logerot Hotelwinter garden,[g] at Fifth Avenue and 18th Street in New York City.[5]
The bronzePan was loaned for a year to theMetropolitan Museum of Art, beginning in spring 1899.[6]
Barnard exhibitedPan andStruggle of the Two Natures in Man at theExposition Universelle in Paris from April to November 1900.[h] The bronzePan was installed outdoors along theChamps-Élysées, and the marbleTwo Natures inside thePetit Palais des Beaux-Arts. He was awarded a Gold Medal for the two sculptures.[14]
Barnard exhibitedPan andTwo Natures at thePan-American Exposition inBuffalo, New York, from May to November 1901.[15] The bronzePan was installed in front of the art gallery and the marbleTwo Natures within the gallery.[i] He was awarded a Gold Medal for the two sculptures.[17]
In November 1902, the bronzePan was among the four works shown by Barnard at theNational Sculpture Society exhibition atMadison Square Garden, New York City.[j]
The bronzePan was exhibited at the1904 World's Fair inSt. Louis, Missouri, as part of an industrial display inside the Palace of Manufactures.[k] The Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company was awarded a Gold Medal for its accomplishment in casting the sculpture,[20] but Barnard was not recognized forPan's artistic merit.
The plaster cast ofPan was included in theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston's one-man exhibition of Barnard's work, November–December 1908.[9]
Following the second rejection ofPan for Central Park, Edward Clark and his mother donated the bronze sculpture to Columbia College (nowColumbia University).[6] The sculpture was placed upon a green-graniteNeoclassical base with three bronze lion-head water spouts for use as a fountain.Charles Follen McKim, ofMcKim, Meade & White, designed the architectural setting forPan: a D-shaped granite fountain basin, circularpool, stepped platform, andexedra (curved stone bench).[1] The Pan Fountain was installed in 1907 on The Green at Amsterdam Avenue and 120th Street, then the northeast corner of the campus.[1]
The sculpture inspired a poem by Ralph Perry, editor of the 1916 yearbook,The Columbian:
We haven't got a bull dog nor an ideal for a totem.
But yet we have a watchword and an emblem of our clan:
We don't say much about it, for it passes our expression
For the symbol of our spirit is the Great God Pan.
Yes, the big and mystic statue that has crept into our blood
With the love we bear our college—and who knows when that began?
But we feel it, and we sense it with a fervor more than knowledge
When we swear, so very softly, "By the Great God Pan!"
All the bigness that is in us, all the glory that runs through us.
That is called out by "Columbia!" as we travel in her van—
And the spirit which it voices is of youth and aspiration:
Aye, may we live forever by the Great God Pan![21]
In 1959, to make way for construction of theSeeley W. Mudd Engineering Building,[22] Columbia relocated thePan statue and its granite base—but not its architectural setting and fountain—to Amsterdam Avenue and 119th Street.[1] It was relocated again in 1963, to a courtyard between Fayerweather and Avery Halls.[1] To make way for a 1975 expansion ofAvery Hall,Pan was relocated to its current site: north of West 116th Street, betweenLewisohn Hall and theLow Memorial Library.[3]
In 1903,Lorado Taft wrote:
Having come home [following 12 years in Paris] with the avowed object of assisting in the development of a "national art," Mr. Barnard must have been rather bewildered to find himself promptly engaged upon a large statue of the "Great God Pan," intended to surmount a rustic fountain within the court of an apartment building. It never reached its destination, but was called higher, to the adornment of Central Park. In common with each of Mr. Barnard's works in turn, it has been pronounced "one of the strangest and most original things yet done by an American sculptor." Its whimsical novelty is as marked as the skill of its execution,—an execution no less cleverly adapted to bronze than most of Mr. Barnard's sculpture to stone. One wonders how he ever happened to make this monstrous creature. What inspiration could the sculptor of the"Two Natures" find in such a subject? Probably some moss-stained figure of classic Italy gave him the idea, and he overlooked its anachronism in his love of muscular modelling, and of nature in general, which Pan may still be permitted to typify. The subject is not very interesting, however; the head is too powerfully grotesque, and the misshapen legs are unpleasant. The transition of the latter from the human to the brutish form should have been made more plausible.Frémiet, with far less felicity of surface handling, could have made those legs convincing. The venerable master would have made us feel sure that if ever there had been such monstrosities, they must have been just as he saw fit to fashion them.[23]
In 1908, J. Nilsen Laurvik wrote:
In the sculpture of Barnard, as in the work ofRodin, we see the vital, almost consuming energy that appears to bestir itself within the clay or marble as it flows out in the undulating, rhythmic movements of thews [sinews] and muscles, in the suggestions of the delicate yet withal powerful bony structure of the body under its finely drawn covering of soft flesh and smooth envelope of skin, as in the prostrate figure of theTwo Natures, where the shoulder blades and the delicate ridge and furrow of the backbone are modeled with a supple, caressing, quivering touch as of life itself. This is no less true of his well-known bronze figurePan, which adorns the northeastern corner of Columbia University campus. With the discerning, this lazy creature of infinite good nature has already become a sort of a classic in the art of our country—one of the very few so far, and one destined to remain incomparable for some time to come. In its suavity and suppleness of modeling it reveals Barnard's virtuosity in a striking manner. It has all the freedom and spontaneity of what we are pleased to term a "sketch" with the dignity and impressiveness of what we so often mistake for a "finished" composition. The modeling of the mobile features of the old god's luxuriant face, executed in eight final sweeps of the sculptor's two thumbs, is in itself atour de force indicative of the man's perfect mastery of his medium. To say that he thinks and feels in clay would hardly be an exaggeration.[8]
Media related toThe Great God Pan (sculpture) at Wikimedia Commons
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