Valerie Fletcher: Bernard Meadows is a British sculptor. He was profoundly affected by his experiences in World War II and before that. During the Great Depression, his working-class family did not have the wherewithal to allow him to stay in school. He did not even finish high school, but he did manage to study art while working at various jobs.

During the war, he belonged to the British Royal Air Force and was sent off to serve in South and Southeast Asia. He did not see action so much as the dreary, slogging effort that became necessary to supply and support the troops. When he returned to England, there were few jobs, few opportunities for art in the first years. And then in the 50s, he started working primarily as a sculptor of bizarre animals – animals that had a kind of expressive power.

Finally in 1960, when he turned 45 years old, he decided to take a new direction and he began making figure sculptures. The sculpture here is a work called Augustus from 1963. This piece, although a little bit perplexing at first, is actually a reference to a famous sculpture of Ancient Rome. And that is a standing figure of the Emperor Augustus who is considered one of the greatest emperors of the entire history of Rome. And that sculpture was of the triumphant emperor in ceremonial armor striding forward with one arm raised and a crown of laurel leaves symbolizing victory on his head.

Meadows, however, depicted him as a stunted, shell-like, encased creature of some sort, presumably human with two legs and a torso, but encased in a kind of armor and not even a classical or even modern military armor, but more like that of a crustacean, like a horseshoe crab or some other ancient slightly creepy creature. And when you look at this, the armor too has been chipped. It’s been cracked with these crevices. So it is an image of what was once perhaps a great noble subject that has become attacked, deteriorated, and diminished through the sufferings of living through modern times.