The fourth piece is a sculpture entitled Field for the British Isles, by Antony Gormley. This piece was done in 1993 and consists of around 40,000 individual terracotta figures set up on the floor of a room facing the viewer. Gormley sculpted these figures with the help of volunteers and their extended families; each volunteer was given a portion of the 30 tons of clay total that were required to create this piece (Antony Gormley: Field). Field is significant in that it represents a populous of unique figures, all done by a variety of people. It could represent the population of any given country, as it is made up of individuals made by volunteers with all different backgrounds and upbringings. Although it is slightly different from the aforementioned paintings, it displays a similar theme in the sense that, amidst such a huge mass of people, complete knowledge is unreachable. In addition, such immensity symbolizes the extent of the natural world and the fact that it is immeasurable. Although this piece is less mysterious in itself than some of the other works in the collection, there is still a minor element of mystery in that, within such a large populous of human-like figures, a viewer cannot know everything about each figure; this includes what volunteer constructed the figure, what the figure itself looks like, or what inspired each volunteer when making each unique piece.
This piece was created recently, in 1993 (an era of no specific artistic movement), in an attempt to “materialize the place at the other side of appearance where we all live.” This has been the focus of many of Gormley’s works, with a cast of his own body having been used as a basis for metal and clay sculptures (Antony Gormley - Wiki). Field for the British Isles is similar to other paintings in the collection, such as The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, in that it depicts nature as untamed and immense, although in this piece ‘nature’ is represented by a mass of figures, rather than a landscape of a scene in nature.
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