Winged Victory
circa 1951
Bronze
30 × 28 × 24-1/2 inches
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gift of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, Inc., 1983
1983.200
Photography not permitted
Location: Bass Concert Hal Lobby
GPS: 30.285849,-97.731568
Frederick Kiesler trained as an architect before turning to sculpture and design. Like many other European modernists in the 1920s, he was a utopian idealist. Kiesler first gained recognition in 1925 at the International Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris, where he exhibited a large gridlike structure titled City in Space. Its straight lines and flat planes joined at right angles embodied the utopian belief that simple geometric forms in art would help facilitate a more rational and egalitarian society.
Within a few years, however, Kiesler abandoned that approach in favor of curving biomorphic forms. The new surrealist movement rejected rationality and regularity in art. Arguing that human beings are organic, the surrealists favored forms inspired by sources in nature—plants, animals, microscopic organisms, water, clouds, and rocks, for example. Kiesler began to conceive buildings based on open, ovoid forms, which he called “endless” because they could be infinitely adaptable. His drawings and models were hopeful conceptual prototypes rather than pragmatic plans.
Kiesler fled Europe during World War II and settled in New York, where he earned income primarily by designing store windows, exhibition spaces, and theater sets. In 1959 he designed the Endless House, in which egglike rooms could enclose the inhabitants like a womb and thereby “foster peace within.”
Winged Victory, c. 1951
This sculpture’s title alludes to the famous Greek statue The Winged Victory of Samothrace from the second century BCE. Created to commemorate a military conquest, the white marble female figure strides forward with widespread wings. Her body, wings, and clothing are wonderfully animated as if in an invigorating breeze. Since the early nineteenth century, the statue has stood prominently on the main landing of the grand staircase of the Louvre Museum in Paris, where it has been seen by millions of visitors.
Kiesler reinterpreted that iconic monument to victory: here the figure has vanished, leaving only its blackened wings falling to the ground. To viewers familiar with the Greek statue, Kiesler’s sculpture offers a poignant visual metaphor for the collapse of the ideas and ideals of Western civilization and the destruction often inherent in victory.
The motif of wings falling to earth evokes other sources as well, such as the biblical downfall of angels immortalized in John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. In the years after World War II, the ancient Greek tale of Icarus appealed to some artists and writers. On manmade wings of feathers and wax, Icarus became the first mythic human to fly. But he flew too close to the sun (symbol of divinity to the Greeks), the wax melted, and Icarus crashed to his death on earth—much as the utopian aspirations of Kiesler’s generation had been crushed by war.
Bibliographic Highlights
Barr, Alfred H. “Kiesler’s Galaxy.” Harper’s Bazaar, April 1952, 142–43.
Bogner, Dieter, and Peter Noever, eds. Frederick Kiesler: Endless Space. Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2001. Texts by Dieter Bogner, Greg Lynn, Lisa Phillips, and Lebbeus Woods.
Davidson, Susan, and Philip Rylands, eds. Peggy Guggenheim and Frederick Kiesler: The Story of Art of This Century. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2005. Texts by Dieter Bogner, Susan Davidson, Francis V. O’Connor, Don Quaintance, Philip Rylands, Jasper Sharp, and Valentina Sonzogni.
De Kooning, Elaine. “Dickinson and Kiesler.” Art News 51 (April 1952): 20–23, 66–67.
Goldberg, RoseLee. “Frederick Kiesler, Endless Love.” Flash Art 102 (March/April 1981): 37–39.
Kiesler, Frederick. Inside the Endless House; Art, People, Architecture: A Journal. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.
Kiesler, Frederick, and Thomas Creighton. “Kiesler’s Pursuit of an Idea.” Progressive Architecture 42 (July 1961): 112.
Kiesler, Frederick, Harald Krejci, and Valentina Sonzogni. Frederick Kiesler: Endless House, 1947–1961. Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2003.
Levin, Kim. “Kiesler and Mondrian: Art into Life.” Art News 63 (May 1964): 38–41, 49–50.
McGuire, Laura M. “A Movie House in Space and Time: Frederick Kiesler’s Film Arts Guild Cinema, New York, 1929.” Studies in the Decorative Arts (Spring-Summer 2007): 45–78.
Phillips, Lisa, ed. Frederick Kiesler. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1989. Texts by Dieter Bogner, Cynthia Goodman, Barbara Lesák, Jeanne T. Newlin, and Lisa Phillips.
Safran, Yehuda, ed. Frederick Kiesler, 1890–1965. London: Architectural Association, 1989. Texts by Dieter Bogner, Jennifer Gough-Cooper and Jacques Caumont, Frederick Kiesler, Barbara Lesák, and Yehuda Safran.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Frederick Kiesler: Environmental Sculpture. New York, 1964.