Haeata / Dawn, Porehu / Dusk, After Michelangelo’s Tomb for the Medici
2003
cast bronze
Heata / Dawn: 2500 x 1420 x 640 mm, Porehu / Dusk 2500 x 1370 x 640 mm
signed and dated top of each base: “Dibble 2003”
inscribed top of bases: “Dawn” and “Dusk”
Provenance: Private Collection, Auckland
Exhibited: Stoneleigh Sculpture in the Gardens, Auckland Botanic Gardens, Auckland, 2007-08; Dibble Sculpture Exhibition, Gorge Rd Gallery and Gow Langsford Gallery, Queenstown, 2003
Illustrated: Paul Dibble, Paul Dibble, David Batemen, 2001, pp. 92 - 93
Few New Zealand sculptors have worked in bronze with the vision and energy of Paul Dibble. Bronze is an intensely demanding medium and unlike most of his contemporaries, Dibble casts his work from his own custom built foundry in Palmerston North.
The human figure has been a motif explored throughout his career and Haeta / Dawn, Porehu / Dusk, After Michelangelo’s Tomb for the Medici is a major work from his Seated Figure series which began in the mid 1990s. The title of Haeata / Dawn, Porehu / Dusk, After Michelangelo’s Tomb for the Medici elucidates Dibble’s ongoing exploration of New Zealand’s national identity and establishes dialogue around works by European masters.
The latter part of the title makes direct reference to Michelangelo’s marble sculptures on the tomb for the Medici family. Four allegorical figures, Night and Day, Dawn and Twilight on the sarcophagus represent the passing of time. The representations of Dawn as a woman and Day as a man reference the eternal cycle of the calendar - as night prepares to rest, day begins to wake.
Michelangelo’s reclining figures of Dawn and Twilight appear massive and muscular as if larger than life, and it is clear that the artist was not interested in depicting a delicacy of form. In contrast Dibble’s renditions have been simplified to long elegant curves. The figures of Haeta / Dawn, Porehu / Dusk, After Michelangelo’s Tomb for the Medici are thinned to semi-relief and perch on the edges of monolithic bases. The juxtaposition of these elements gives the figures a lyrical elegance not found in the dense works from which they were inspired and present the human form both in its heroism, and in its fragility. Although each is over two meters in height and cast in robust metal, the figures have a frailty to them and rather than appearing opposing or confrontational, they seem more like friendly giants that mindfully watch over our landscape.
An explicitly New Zealand reference is found in the Maori transliterations of ‘dawn’ and ‘dusk’ in the title. Using the same script as used on the cover of the first Maori bible, the words Haeta and Porehu are also seen etched into the shoulders of the figures. We are further reminded of the figures’ pacific identity by a subtle koru emblem inscribed into the foot or buttocks of each figure.
The Seated Figure series is partly inspired by Goya’s etchings of the Napoleonic wars in which colossal figures were often depicted sitting in the landscape, observing the battlefield from a distance. In a New Zealand context they are understood to reflect lonely individuals pondering the changes in our landscape and social history.
Dibble’s prominence within contemporary New Zealand art was cemented with his successful commission in Hyde Park in London. The work The Southern Stand (2006) commemorates the relationship between New Zealand and the United Kingdom and is dedicated to the New Zealand people and culture.