Artworks

An American Girl · CR375

An American Girl

CR375

Kinkell, Scotland

Summer, 1977

Bronze

25.5 x 26 x 31 inches

The model for all of these sculptures was my then wife, Galina Golikova, who, although she was brought up in New York from the age of eight, was born in Regensburg, Germany and has Russian, Ukrainian and Mongolian antecedents.

The headscarf is intended to be reminiscent of a US World War II helmet; it has always seemed to me that the large cranial size of these helmets gave US soldiers of the period a disturbing and paradoxical juvenile appearance. (The young of every species have large heads compared with adult specimens, and the signal transmittted by this induces protective reactions; the effect is hijacked as sexual attraction in women by the accent on ‘big hair’ and large lips and eyes.) The contrast between the US helmet and the German one of the same period, which looks efficient and brutal, and the British one, which looks plain silly, like an upturned basin, is worth noting and the possible reasons for the difference is a fertile area for speculative conjecture.

The pose of An American Girl is Romantic, driven by the expression of aggressive consumerism. She is disruptive to the viewer: confident, seductive and relaxed. The figure seems conscious of this, but at the same time it is self-contained, introspective, and completely independent.

The geometric articulation of the spine and the almost landscape-like quality of the parts of the sculpture reinforce this enigmatic certitude, while other parts are extremely realistic, human and therefore vulnerable.