Ralph Helmick
born 1952, Pittsburgh, PA
works in Newton, MA
Career Decision, 1980, wood, 91" x 42" x 103", Lent by Joyce McDaniel, Boston, MA
In Career Decision, Ralph Helmick plays witty games with the history of sculpture by creating a fanciful anti-monument. This bent-over obelisk, with a wooden tongue sticking out, is an anthropomorphized version of an ancient and hallowed symbol that dates back to ancient Egypt—familiar in this country as the form of our national memorial to founding father George Washington. Here, the rigid phallic monument is made soft, its timeless stone converted to rapidly aging wood. Its posture and illusory motion lend it an almost human personality, and the picket fence at its base domesticates its public, iconic quality. The title, Career Decision, further humanizes the monument by injecting an element of narrative bound up with the artist's personal take on his chosen path. Made in 1980, the sculpture is also a joke at the expense of its geometric Minimalist forbearers of the 1960s and 1970s, and pays homage to the anti-monumental Pop Art of artists like Claes Oldenburg.
