Woman Against the Wind
Ilana Goor
Date 1972 | Technique Bronze | Height h.250 | Location Charles Clore Park, Tel Aviv, Israel
Notwithstanding the clear affinity to the winged Hellenistic statue of the god of victory, Nike of Samothraces (190 BCE, Louvre Museum, Paris), the sculpture “Woman in the Wind” by Ilana Goor breaks down the established principles of sculpture of proportions and texture. The amorphousness of the material, the density of the massive folds and the huge dimensions of the wings as compared to the body as sculpted by Goor, testify to the concept expropriated from the Olympus (the home of the Greek gods) to mortals, clearing a path with courage in a masculine, patriarchal world. The clothing is as if it is fluttering in the wind, the body and wings merge into one moving web. The first execution in bronze was a continuation of the method of esteemed and pioneering sculptors such as Michelangelo and Rodin, who did not fear leaving a finished sculpture with signs of the work process. In Goor’s case the sculpture is the process and vice versa. This sculpture represents a combination between old and new, religion and atheism, worldliness and spirituality from which the artist’s perception of the world is comprised.