Details
Michael Ayrton (1921-1975)
Mirror Maze
bronze with a dark brown patina, string, orange perspex, on a copper base
25 in. (63.5 cm.) wide
Conceived in 1966 and cast in an edition of 6.
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Leslie Hindman, Chicago, 9 September 2007, lot 42, as 'The weaver', where purchased by the present owner.
Literature
C.P. Snow, Michael Ayrton Drawings and Sculpture, London, 1966, no. 203, another cast illustrated and on dust jacket.
P. Cannon-Brookes, Michael Ayrton, Birmingham, 1978, p. 117, no. 209, another cast illustrated.

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Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams

Lot Essay

Discussing the maze series of figures, the artist (Drawings and Sculpture, London, 1966, opposite, pl. 139) wrote, 'Although I propesied that Daedulus 'having worked his miracle would become still', he has returned ambiguously to my sculpture. He is not still, nor is he still Daedalus. He provided, as the creator of the labyrinth at Knossos in which the Minotaur was imprisoned, the starting point for the series variously called Maze Makers and Maze Figures but in these he has become for me a being at once more general and more personal. He has become any man who, during his life, builds in and around himself a maze of circumstances and experiences and this, it seems to me, we all do. This labyrinth has two inevitably linked functions. It excludes to protect and contains to imprison'.

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