Arts in Society

Torso of a Female Figure (1)

April 11, 2013

Bridgette Bates

Apr 11, 2013

From her aerial view, from the inside of the museum while sensing the

luminescence of schoolchildren on the afternoon steps.

She is not the god, but of the gods.

Draped in white, one clavicle emerging from her sleeve, she is not contained by

glass, only an invisible shield protects her from the elements of the museum. She is safer here than when the women stood weaponless on the walls to guard the city.

The graves of the women are the most elaborate:

gold lockets and rings, children too locked to the women’s sides in burial.

Her torso is small in comparison to the general’s. He with nipple, she draped and without because rendering of the female figure is the practice of clothing the body in a matronly pose.

The female figure, the only non-god, non-soldier, non-athlete in the wing, is a torso that has given birth to other torsos. The female soft in marble, her half-arms survive only to her biceps where the weight of children was lifted.

In the museum, we can imagine her function as clearly as the sculptor because we all have mothers.

We may or may not have gods or generals.

Some of us have mothers who pray, some who mourn for the sacrificed as they watch from the city walls. If a relief representing a woman can portray what we all share then maybe inside the museum there is a chance for new life.