The Eyes Have It
Artist:
James Surls
(American, born 1943)
Date: 1974
Medium: Pine, maple, glass, and twine
Dimensions:
h. 54 in. (137.2 cm); w. 38 in. (96.5 cm); d. 38 in. (96.5 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Nancy B. Negley
Object number: 80.37.9
Copyright: © James Surls
Label Text
"The eye is like an all-seeing kind of phenomenon.
It also gives life to something. You can walk over
and stick an eye on your file cabinet and it sort
of insinuates that there's something in the file
cabinet looking back at you, it automatically gives
a sense of life to it. I wanted my early pieces to be
alive and I wanted to do something that would give
them a sense of liveness."
James Surls
Often developing his imagery from his dreams, Surls transforms ordinary tree trunks into fanciful anthropomorphic creatures that take on lives of their own. In this instance, he has embedded glass eyes within a small pyramid, crowning a four-legged being with spindly wing-like appendages extending from its upper body. While the eyes evoke the idea that the sculpture looks back at the viewer, their placement within the pyramid suggests that they might be manifestations of the mystical "all-seeing eye", commonly found on the back of an American one-dollar bill.
Surls created this sculpture from trees around Taos, New Mexico, where he spent his summers in the early 1970s. As the son of a carpenter, he learned to use axes, chain saws, and other tree-cutting tools during his childhood, while felling trees to clear the land on the family farm.
(David Rubin, Label Text 2008)
It also gives life to something. You can walk over
and stick an eye on your file cabinet and it sort
of insinuates that there's something in the file
cabinet looking back at you, it automatically gives
a sense of life to it. I wanted my early pieces to be
alive and I wanted to do something that would give
them a sense of liveness."
James Surls
Often developing his imagery from his dreams, Surls transforms ordinary tree trunks into fanciful anthropomorphic creatures that take on lives of their own. In this instance, he has embedded glass eyes within a small pyramid, crowning a four-legged being with spindly wing-like appendages extending from its upper body. While the eyes evoke the idea that the sculpture looks back at the viewer, their placement within the pyramid suggests that they might be manifestations of the mystical "all-seeing eye", commonly found on the back of an American one-dollar bill.
Surls created this sculpture from trees around Taos, New Mexico, where he spent his summers in the early 1970s. As the son of a carpenter, he learned to use axes, chain saws, and other tree-cutting tools during his childhood, while felling trees to clear the land on the family farm.
(David Rubin, Label Text 2008)
Not on view
In Collection(s)
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
