Gracehoper (2/3)
Gracehoper is a public artwork by American artist Tony Smith, located in the Louisville Waterfront Park, which is in Louisville, Kentucky. This large-scale sculpture, measuring twenty-two feet high and forty six feet long, was fabricated by Lippincott, Inc in 1988, eight years after Smith's death, at a cost of one million dollars. The sculpture is made of welded steel that has been painted black.
Description
The sculpture was named in part after a line in James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake and inspired by the funnel-like form of the hoppers used to load coal into railroad cars. Smith said the title "comes from the central passage in Finnegans Wake called 'The Ondt' - corresponding to the ant-and the 'Gracehoper.' In the novel a beast named 'Gracehoper,' representing progress, change, and dynamism, takes on in battle and defeats another mythical beast, the 'Ondt,' a hardworking, conscientious but unimaginative antlike animal."Art historian Joan Pachner described the artwork as based on Smith's "vision of an invisible space-lattice of alternating tetrahedrons and octahedrons." Smith created Gracehoper in an edition of three, with one artist's proof; this one is the second, while the Detroit Institute of Arts has the first in its collection. Additionally, the DIA has in its collection the original cardboard maquette, which was created in 1961 and is also painted black.