Hunters Point Parks Conservancy and the Lachaise Foundation are thrilled to announce the temporary installation of Gaston Lachaise’s Floating Woman (Floating Figure) in Hunter’s Point South Park. The piece was placed in its temporary home on Thursday, September 24.
The work is one of Lachaise’s best-known, monumental works dating from the late twenties. The buoyant, expansive figure represents a timeless earth goddess, one Lachaise knew and sought to capture throughout his career. This vision was inspired by his wife, who was his muse and model, Isabel, that “majestic woman” who walked by him once by the Bank of the Seine. This work is a tribute to the power of all women, to ‘Woman,’ as the artist referred to his wife, with a capital W.
Gaston Lachaise devoted himself to the human form, producing a succession of powerfully conceived nude figures in stone and bronze that reinvigorated the sculptural traditions of Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol.
Lachaise wrote: “You may say that the model is my wife. It is a large generous figure of great placidity, great tranquility. . .What I am aiming to express is the glorification of the human being, of the human body, of the human spirit with all there is of daring, magnificence. . .” (“A Comment on My Sculpture,” Creative Art, 1928).
A total of nine casts exist. Other casts can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; in Philadelphia at the Society Hill Towers, designed by I. M. Pei; at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Nebraska; at Princeton University in New Jersey; at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; and in the collection of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.
The work was cast at the Modern Art Foundry in Astoria, Queens. This Queens connection, coupled with its visibility from the East River inspired the Lachaise foundation’s choice of Hunter’s Point South Park and the specific install location. The piecesitsby the water, on the West side of the old railroad tracks in the park, aligned with 51st Ave.
HPPC would like to thank the Lachaise Foundation, NYC Parks, and Community Board 2 for helping make this installation possible. The piece will reside in Hunter’s Point South for one year.