The Iron Men: Our Pursuit of Understanding
by: Megan Yarnall
Writer, All About Business
I recently started working near Madison Square Park in Manhattan, and for the first few days, a man at the top of the stairs to the subway startled me. The same man was there every morning, without fail, making me jump suddenly to the side. Every time it only took me seconds to realize that this man was not real; he is made of fiberglass and iron. Still, he gave me a good fright every morning for the first week.
I began to notice other iron men around the park as I wandered around on my lunch walks. I eventually spotted some on top of buildings in part of the surrounding skyline. My friends joked that perhaps part of the public art project with the Iron Men was suicide watch – why else would they be on the edge of these skyscrapers? I got to digging around and discovered that these iron men were part of Madison Square Park’s public art projects, and that particular exhibit is Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon.
I love public art because it adds color and vivacity to a city or a public space – it is a positive addition to a landscape, and it inspires public education instead of a dull view. In the middle of Manhattan, Event Horizon makes you stop and wonder how many other details you’re missing in The Big City as you rush through the normal day and are suddenly started by a man next to you in the square or a man on top of a building. Part of the point of the project is perspective, according to Antony Gormley himself. In my interpretation, these iron men can only look in one direction, and each has a unique perspective from his station in the park or on a building. How does this apply to us in society today? How narrow, or wide, can our views stay or stretch? How stationary are we? From where do we obtain our perspective? What can we look at and find from where we are, and how far can we go from there? Gormley also expresses that his project questions the gaze, meaning the sight of the statues and its scope. Coupled with their stationary position, in which no part of the body can be moved or shifted, viewers are moved to consider their own embedment.
Much of my English degree education was influenced by perspective and point-of-view, but with this project it seems that not everyone needs a college degree to learn about this. All they have to do is pay attention to the works around them. Public art offers a free education to those who would like to grasp it – which seems much like education in the first place: an experience from which you get what you put in.
These iron men on the street corners and on top of skyscrapers around the park are meant to represent us, and inspire us to consider our perspective of the world. The physical body – ours and the iron ones of these men – limit our frame of reference to the world. An event horizon by definition is a boundary surrounding a blackhole, creating a line past which nothing can be affected by events of the universe. Antony Gormley encourages us to think about our own Event Horizon with his iron men. The use of public art in such a fashion enables greater access to education – free education – to those who wish to learn more about the work and its message. Further, one of the purposes of education is to appreciate the world around us and understand its beauty, its troubles, and its limitations. Event Horizon, and other public art works, educate us in just this way. Not only can you get a shake, relax on a bench, or play Frisbee in the park – you can get a free education. If nothing deeper, you can always get, as I heard one girl label it this morning, “a rough education in accurate male anatomy.”
Event Horizon is displayed throughout Madison Square Park in New York at 23rd street and Madison Avenue until August 15, 2010.
Megan Yarnall recently graduated from Dickinson College with a BA in English. She also studied creative writing and Italian and currently writes freelance articles for Demand Studios. She also continues writing both fiction and nonfiction, and working on photography. Her photos can be found at www.meganyarnall.wordpress.com and her writing can be found at www.megtaylor.wordpress.com.
