Love it or loathe it, Antony Gormley's "Habitat" puts Anchorage on the international arts map in an unprecedented way.
The giant metal sculpture -- 24 feet tall, 13 feet wide and 17 feet from toe to tailbone -- prominently situated on the grounds of the Anchorage Museum, cannot be idly encountered. The viewer is compelled to react the instant he or she encounters the stylized human sitting on his haunches, apparently waiting or contemplating.
We can expect this Percent for Art piece to draw serious out-of-state attention. Gormley, of England, is one of the world's most famous living artists and "Habitat" is his first permanent artwork in America.
The squatting pose has led some wags to suggest that the man is answering the call of nature. But its crossed arms and straight-ahead stare seem more legitimately suggestive of a watchman patiently waiting for a signal or a hunter silently scoping for game.
A significant body of Gormley's previous work has been temporary installations, often consisting of many small elements. "Asian Field," presented in several Far East locations, has contained upwards of 200,000 hand-sized figures.
"Habitat," on the other hand, is a single, sizeable monument, more like his best known work, "Angel of the North," which stands 66 feet high and has wings that stretch 178 feet.
Gormley relished the chance to create another large piece, calling size "part of the material possibility of sculpture."
"If you're interested in making things that make people look at where they are, scale is a pretty important tool," he said in a phone interview from his studio in England last week.
A PROPOSITION
In all of his works, he said, he tries to present viewers with a "proposition." In this case, "I want to invite people to reconsider their own size and relationship to the site that they find themselves sharing with the work."
The statue consists of 57 shoebox shapes made from stainless steel and welded together to create the humanoid form that one commentator has called a "colossal android Lego."
Gormley explained his use of blocks as "a response to the grid system." Not just the parallel streets of downtown Anchorage, but the ubiquitous modern impulse to define space and time with grids.
"Your first surveyors to the West Coast laid down the understanding of territory by the imposition of Euclidian geometry," he said. In a similar way, he suggested, "Habitat" applies geometry to anatomy. Boxes become the cells of a body as rooms are the cells of a building.
The square aesthetic was reinforced on a 2008 trip to Alaska when Gormley saw the Anchorage Museum's Yup'ik science exhibit (currently on display at the Smithsonian), "Yuungnaqpiallerput: The Way We Genuinely Live." The matching of grasses at right angles to make mats, socks and baskets impressed him.
"I studied anthropology before I went to art school," he said. "It made me think about art not simply as a succession of 'isms' within the Western canon or as decoration, but as something with a function."
Gormley has previously used boxes as analogies for bodies, as in his "Allotment" installation in Denmark, recently reborn as "Allotment II" in Austria.
These contrast with the natural human forms with which he has previously been associated: the life-size statues in "Event Horizon," now a temporary installation in New York City, are all nude body casts of himself, as are the permanent statues at Crosby Beach near Liverpool. His evident delight in people shapes have led some critics to characterize him as a traditionalist.
A STACK OF CRATES
But there's nothing traditional about "Habitat." Viewers won't necessarily recognize its humanity at first glance. It faces south, making its back the first thing drivers will see whether they approach it on C Street or Sixth Avenue. It may look like a stack of crates until viewers come abreast of it.
The vertical planes of the statue are aligned with the walls of surrounding buildings so that "it's immersed in this grid and becomes part of the larger town," Gormley said.
Gormley rejected local smiths' suggestions for a shiny finish as too reminiscent of a kitchen appliance. Instead, "Habitat's" steel is as dull and grey as a typical Anchorage sky.
He didn't want it to "read immediately as something metallic," he said, "but as something frosty. I want it to be responsive to changing conditions of light and atmosphere, to be different at night and day, summer and winter."
Effects of water and weather will eventually show on the metal, but the color should remain much the same for the life of the piece. While the nearly flawless execution by Anchorage steel workers may be vulnerable to damage from determined vandals, it's hard to know what the natural elements will do.
Gormley said he could envision someone trying to take shelter under it during snowy weather, though there are gaps between the boxes that give the piece an airy feel.
The name is not meant to suggest a house or any other "made thing," he said, but something beyond a mere dwelling, "an animal's natural home, a wider environment."
What Alaska means to that wider environment helped inspire "Habitat." Gormley insisted that the statue was not intended as an "apocalypic" message. But he also spoke about the sensitivity of the Arctic to changes in climate and described Alaska as a "gauge" for detecting climate change before it registers in the rest of the world.
With that in mind, the figure can be viewed as a sentinel carefully scanning the southern horizon, alert to something that will cause him to rise from his crouch and take action.
This gaze recalls "Angel" and the Crosby Beach statues. But while those figures look out to sea, "Habitat" is hemmed in by the city. It stares right at the west wing of the Federal Building through two rows of birch trees. How those trees will affect the lines of sight when mature and in leaf remains to be seen. For now, looking back from Seventh Avenue through those trees is perhaps the best viewpoint.
Whether one chooses to interpret "Habitat" as monitoring global warming, keeping an eye on big government or something else, it supplies a unique and conceptually new symbol with which Anchorage will be identified.
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
By MIKE DUNHAM
mdunham@adn.com