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Lot Essay
Conceived in 1964 and cast in an edition of three, First Man represents a pivotal moment in the artist's work. Her earlier warriors and falling and flying figures seem to be preoccupied with understandable pessimistic post-war concerns while, as Sarah Kent notes, First Man looks forward to a more complex representation of the male figure in her sculpture: 'He [First Man] stands naked and bemused, his hands, head and feet not yet fully differentiated, as though the process of development is not yet complete. He is a large, full-bodied man whose embryonic features suggest that he could go either way - his senses dulled into boorishness or heightened into self-awareness. The sculpture is optimistic in its implication that insensitivity, aggression and blinding ambition are not innate masculine characteristics, as Desmond Morris would have us believe, but are qualities encouraged through the process of socialization' (see B. Robertson, op. cit., p. 60).
Annette Ratuszniak comments on the present work, 'In the title of First Man and it's arm motif, Frink's standing figure refers directly to Rodin's L'age d'airain of 1876-76. Rodin had created the first modern ambivalent sculpture in which different content-based motifs were layered. The represented man was a warrior ... and at the same time wounded. Via the slight stepping motif, the extended posture of the mythological allusion in the title, the figure also represented the awakening of humankind. Frink's First Man seems to represent the condition immediately after awakening. The man stands and surveys his surroundings: hesitant, curious, self-conscious, not knowing what awaits him.
For all the proximity to Rodin in terms of content, what is strIking is that First Man is the first figure in which Frink abandoned the expressive modelling that had been her trademark until then. The surface was worked through an enclosed, large form, and instead of tracing movements three-dimensionally on the surface, the tension was hidden beneath the skin. Nevertheless, the surface was full of working traces and anything but smooth indicating that Frink was becoming more and more sculptural in her process, and making increasing use of chisels, rasps and saws on the form built up in plaster in order to achieve her finished forms ... In Frink's oeuvre First Man marks the transition from (sometimes narcissistic) expressive modelling to the modele (loc. cit., p. 29).
Annette Ratuszniak comments on the present work, 'In the title of First Man and it's arm motif, Frink's standing figure refers directly to Rodin's L'age d'airain of 1876-76. Rodin had created the first modern ambivalent sculpture in which different content-based motifs were layered. The represented man was a warrior ... and at the same time wounded. Via the slight stepping motif, the extended posture of the mythological allusion in the title, the figure also represented the awakening of humankind. Frink's First Man seems to represent the condition immediately after awakening. The man stands and surveys his surroundings: hesitant, curious, self-conscious, not knowing what awaits him.
For all the proximity to Rodin in terms of content, what is strIking is that First Man is the first figure in which Frink abandoned the expressive modelling that had been her trademark until then. The surface was worked through an enclosed, large form, and instead of tracing movements three-dimensionally on the surface, the tension was hidden beneath the skin. Nevertheless, the surface was full of working traces and anything but smooth indicating that Frink was becoming more and more sculptural in her process, and making increasing use of chisels, rasps and saws on the form built up in plaster in order to achieve her finished forms ... In Frink's oeuvre First Man marks the transition from (sometimes narcissistic) expressive modelling to the modele (loc. cit., p. 29).