ABRAHAM DAVID CHRISTIAN

ABRAHAM DAVID CHRISTIAN
DIE SPRACHE DES MENSCHEN | THE LANGUAGE OF MAN


In Pursuit of “The Language of Man”: The Early Works of Abraham David Christian
R i c h a r d M i l a z z o



I have always admired Abraham David Christian’s early sculptures, but never had an opportunity to write about them. When
it came, in the form of this show in Bremen, I responded immediately.
Initially, I think I felt strongly about them because of the materials. Selbst (1976/78) and Adam (1980) are made of earth;
hinter der Erfahrung (1981) is made of plaster; La prophétie (1981) is made of paper and oil paint; and Die Sprache des Menschen
(1981) is made of plaster and paint. Although Der heilige Mensch (1982/86) is cast in bronze, it has a form that is related
to these others — so, I include it among them, and also because it carries an early date. It is not just the modesty of the
materials with which Christian has chosen to work, but that they in some way contribute to their “archeological” forms, if
I may call it that. They all possess a built-up structure, in which elements are often stacked on top of one another and the
lines of demarcation are still left visible; this is a way of working that I generally associate with various African cultures
(Fig. 1), but also with other so-called “primitive” or ancient peoples of South America, the Near East, and Mexico.
Also, by “archaeological” I do not mean to imply just the architectonic but also the figurative. Selbst (Fig. 2), or Self, of
course, looks rather monolithic, if not monumental, although it is relatively small; it also looks Minimal, and given the time
it was made in, the 1970’s, you would normally not be wrong. “Critics,” he says, “would often talk about this work only in
terms of Minimalism, when in fact it was a critique of Minimalism.”1 In fact, as the title sort of hints at, the work is profoundly
intimate. Although a better word might be “erotic.” In their proximity, and in the way the interior sides of the two
earthen forms bulge or swell toward the center, they delineate a labial interfacial opening that is unmistakably feminine in
feeling. The heaviness or weightiness, and the blockiness, of the forms, which comprise this sculpture that simply rests on
the ground, further contribute to its elemental relation to the earth. No obvious earth goddess this, and seemingly mute,
she is not seamless, for she is nonetheless equipped with a kind of “mouth,” or, as I said above, a labial opening, which
somehow speaks to us, or, at least, makes us want to penetrate or pass through her to the other side. It is vaguely reminiscent
of the work by Bruce Nauman, called Corridor Installation (1970) (Fig. 3), in which the walls of the piece are built just
barely wide enough for us to slip through to the other side, but not without the passage or experience of walking through
causing us sufficient anxiety. As we walk deeper into the piece, we may watch this experience being recorded in a monitor
at the far end of the passageway.
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That the artist calls it Adam leaves no doubt as to its figurative connotations; but that he makes his figure of Adam so
dependent, or, let us say, lie so restfully on the female base, is striking. In the simplicity of its action and emotion, it reminds
me of many works by Constantin Brancusi, in which a head lies peacefully on its side. Here, I am thinking of Newborn
(1915) (Fig. 5), Sleeping Muse (1917–18), Sculpture for the Blind (1925), and Beginning of the World (1924). Christian’s
sculpture also resembles the stones used for rice-husking in Bengal (Fig. 6); although smoother and closer to each other in
formal values (they are more rounded), they are worshipped as male and female.5 Adam is also evocative of Barnett Newman’s
Broken Obelisk (1963–67) (Fig. 7).
“I liked Newman very much. I liked the verticality of his work, of his sculptures. I was already interested in him in 1968. I
liked his approach. And his short texts on artists. He was an elegant man. But I liked David Smith, too. Smith was more
working class, more the craftsman. Newman was elegance personified. He projected a certain spirituality — something you
could not find in Germany.”6
What is clear is that in this sculpture by Christian, there is a perfect harmony between male and female — “Adam” in Hebrew,
the artist informs me, in fact means “earth”7 —; but this does not make the sculpture less erotic. While the column
above is chipped and dinged, it has nonetheless maintained its form; whereas the female form below looks like it has undergone
a great deal of wear and tear. But we must not forget that the column has been cut-off or edited at both ends in order
that it might exist in perfect formal harmony with the female form beneath it — not unlike Newman’s “zips”, which are
cut-off by the top and bottom parts of the canvas. But, again, in Adam, the relation is one of balance, not of dominance, aggression,
or violence. For it is clear that even as the male form enters or maintains its space horizontally, and rests on top
of her, it is the female form that lifts him upward, inspires him (or it), and, in effect, sustains him. And they are both made
or derived from the same material: earth. “Women are not goddesses, they are the very vehicles of life.”8 Regardless of the
erotic adventure implicit in this sculpture, the place they are going to is identical to the place from which they began. Their
destiny, no matter how joined or disconnected, related or unrelated it is, is identical with their source. Christian leaves no
doubt that the female and male entities in this work possess distinct forms, but they cannot exist together, cannot constitute
a sculpture, a work of art, a symbolic life form, or a spiritual means, without finding a precise balance or harmony.
hinter der Erfahrung (Fig. 8), which translates into Beyond the Experience, configures a form in raw, unpainted, white
plaster that is explicitly totemic. What is also explicit is the female shape of life that comprises the totem in this sculpture.
The totemic generally played a role in the work of the American Abstract Expressionists — a generation that Christian
particularly likes. “It was a generation that still respected art, even though they were revolutionary, and broke all the
rules.”9 Besides Newman, he liked Jackson Pollock — Christian, in fact, often speaks of his Interconnected Sculptures in relation
to the spontaneity in Pollock’s so-called action or drip paintings —, and Mark Rothko. Later, he was drawn to the spirituality
in the work of Agnes Martin. But also in Blinky Palermo. “I knew Blinky very well. We used to go drinking together,
hanging out in the bars on Canal Street. We liked the girls! All nationalities. For me, he was not really a German artist. He
That Christian calls his sculpture Selbst is somewhat curious, since it is divided into two halves, suggesting, as well,
self-consciousness or self-reflection. Or, in effect, male and female components are joined, for we must not forget the fact
that whatever is implicitly female about this figure or object is also made up entirely of straight lines and angles. But, again,
if we look closely, we see that all the edges, as well as the surfaces, are not exact or mathematical in any quantitative way;
rather they are cracked and chipped, show evidence of age or experience, or the wornness that comes with the passing of
time. In these detailed registrations, they are more qualitative in nature. They make us wonder about the ravages of life,
the toll taken to live it, and the scars left behind. They differentiate an archaeology of the human.
Although the earth pieces were made in Germany,2 Christian reminds me that “Pontormo, Michelangelo, and Leonardo
all put their lives on the line to make art. They were digging dead bodies out of their graves to do their research. That was
interesting. Where is the risk in dangling a sliced-up cow in formaldehyde, especially after Jeff Koons’ basketballs? But German
artists, at the time, were no better. They were putting jokes in their work to turn art into a joke. Then there were those
who behaved like punks ten years after punk was already dead in New York City. But let’s not forget David Smith, who was
beheaded by his own sculpture — talk about a commitment to your art!”3
No matter how geometrical or edifice-related Selbst appears to be, we cannot help but see it not merely as a human construct
or construction but as human per se, even if we do not immediately see it as two lungs breathing or the two sides of
the upper part of the torso. No matter how mute, the two sides suggest relation, in that they relate, at the very least, to each
other, and thus, in some way, to us. In this, there is the narrowness — the narrow passage — of self, and the breath — the
breath of relation — that all relation brings, to a greater or lesser extent. Self is precisely that part of us which eventually —
through consciousness, reflection or self-consciousness, and experience — projects beyond the self to that which lies beyond
or outside it, namely the world, and to a “wider” passage through it. From earth, through its mental and physical configuration,
Christian leads us to the edifice of self and other, which is not outside but within that self, and which lies beyond it.
Adam (Fig. 4), which is made of earth, is also in two parts. But this time, one part, the part that looks like the fragment
of an ancient classical Greek column, is placed on its side and laid on top of a more primitive-looking plinth that has almost
a skirt-like form. They are about of equal size, but the plinth has ridges, looks more worn or chipped-away, as if its function
as a support has entailed sacrifice. Christian says: “I give my work life, because I sacrificed my time, my life to it. Like
someone who travels by subway each day, who goes to work everyday to feed his children, who sacrifices himself, I also
sacrifice myself, travel in the subterranean regions of life, in order to feed my art. I’m giving away my life in order to make
visible something that is invisible. The results, hopefully, is the quality of the endeavor.”4
Here, again, the forms used have very distinct male and female associations. What is interesting is that the column is
cut-off at either end, and is lying on its side rather than asserting itself vertically. Indeed, it appears to be depending upon
the support of the form beneath, whose various angles, chinks, cuts, or openings suggest female genitalia. Or, at the very
least, an earthen skirt with irregular niches and a flat upper surface that enables it to support the column.
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thrusting the female form right in our face, as if to confront or challenge us to live our lives to the fullest, to seek every conceivable
experience, and to stand in the middle of things, in the middle of our own lives, undefended. hinter der Erfahrung is
a sculpture that is completely vulnerable, leaving itself open to every sort of accusation as a kind of fallen Minimalist, a fallen
humanist, or, quite simply, a fallen Adam.
These earliest of works made of paper, and darkly painted in oils, entitled La prophétie (Fig. 10), are, at first glance, phallic
in orientation. That is, until we note that each one sustains a rather dramatic tear — not unrelated to Lucio Fontana’s
perforations —, cut, or sharp-edged intervention of some kind. These interventions always evoke the female shape of life. If
the members of this sculpture did not stand at attention so alertly, we would take them to be rickety old stove pipes or
soot-encrusted chimney spouts, ancient musical instruments — African flutes, for example (Fig. 11) —, or even stranger flowers
or flower bulbs. Christian, in fact, tells me that two of the sculptures that influenced him the most were Picasso’s paper
guitar sculpture from 1912 (Fig. 12), and also his small absinth glass from 1914 (Fig. 13).14 Important, because they convinced
him early on that there were no rules as to what kind of materials you could use to make sculpture, and also that work did
not have to be large to be effective. He is also quick to point out that Picasso used the objet trouvé (in his Cubist sculptures,
but also in his Cubist paintings) before Duchamp.15 Not surprisingly, La prophétie was made in Paris.
In any case, the units in this sculpture all look haphazard, as if the artist had just made them, with very little thought;
they look as if they are about to fall apart. The parts overlap in irregular rhythms, and look as if they had been cut with a
pair of very blunt scissors. In their own makeshift manner, they challenge the powerful armature of Minimalism. In fact,
they suggest more durable materials, such as tin or other metal, but they do not sufficiently mask their vulnerability. If
Adam had been a satyr, these would have been the flutes with which he might have made music.
While they hint at architecture — pipes, tubing, or other structural elements —, they remain enigmatic in their orientation.
In fact, their title, The Prophecy, says as much. This four-part work, along with a piece Christian calls Zeichnung (1981),
or Drawing, that takes a similar form as these, is among his very first paper works, which “prophesizes” his preferred medium
of choice in the future: paper. But painted white rather than darkly. These sculptures also feel very Japanese or almost
as if they had been made by a child or to keep a child amused. They are unauthoritarian, unassuming, and utterly ingenuous.
If they are phallic in any way, they do not escape the penetration of space without themselves showing the signs of having
been penetrated, or, let us say, physically affected, even distressed, by the experience they endured. The tears and
cuts, in fact, emphasize not only the lightness of the materials but the hollowness of the structures. For all of their erectness,
they are defined as much — in an essential way, in their very being — by the holes and voids and emptiness that delineate
their forms.
Perhaps they are prophetic also in the way they foretell Christian’s use of certain awkward and ovoidal forms, as well as
certain cylindrical and spherical shapes, in his later work. One could argue that they are the distinct harbingers of the
was international.”10 There was also something totemic in his work, something that broke down the geometry — turned it into
something else. “When Blinky died, I lost what little connection I had to Düsseldorf. It was a real shock. He was the only
living artist I respected. Even more than Beuys, whom I also knew. Palermo was a serious artist, who didn’t care what anybody
thought of him. He was a free spirit, the real thing. He was interested in life. If you are interested in African culture,
then why not start with the girls?!”11
Here, in hinter der Erfahrung, more than previously, we see the influence of African sculpture, in the way the parts are
stacked or primitively joined together into an accumulation of elements rather than being synthesized into a smooth continuous
form. And also in the way the sculpture isolates that part of the anatomy it wants to emphasize. But you see this
also in the ancient art of India (Fig. 9), where “the icon for the Goddess as the genetrix of all things display[s] her yoni for
puja.”12 In hinter der Erfahrung, the female genitalia becomes the whole focus of the sculpture. One might speak of the work
as a kind of modernist fertility goddess, but, again, with quirks.
It presents the female shape of life not merely as something to contemplate but as something to experience — or, as
something that has already been repeatedly experienced by the artist. We see this in the roughness of the support or
ground, and the female shape itself, as if they had undergone a great deal of relentless use. This is not a totem holding up a
hope or an ideal or a wish for reproductive or vegetative abundance. Nor is there anything worshipful about it. It overtly announces
an absorption, if not an obsession, with the female form. We see this in the unique but repetitive slabs and the
breaks between them that constitute the vertical ground of the sculpture. The base is, in fact, nothing more than still another
of these squarish slabs.
The sculpture looks primitive and weather-beaten, as if it had been around a long time. The title would indicate that beyond
the experience of repeated sexual satisfactions is the far-reaching, and hopefully, far-enduring, residue of those experiences:
art itself, as the outcome of a life fully lived, fully experienced.
To me, this sculpture is based upon the East Indian idea, or a version of it, that sexuality can also be a means to experience
the pleasure of a spiritual state. That the pleasure the body offers is not antithetical to the joy and fulfillment a heightened
state of spirituality proffers. But, again, there is nothing idealistic or Platonic about these heightened states or the
sculptures that emerge from the mire of these experiences.
Born of life not of an art movement, but emphatically rejecting, nonetheless, Minimalism’s self-limiting, self-censuring,
puritanical thrust, it is, in fact, the very geometrical elements in Christian’s sculptures, and in this sculpture in particular,
that undergo the harshest treatment. We get the feeling that these forms have been through the mill, so to speak; that they
have sustained the brunt of experience, rather than being used, as in the case of Donald Judd, as a shield against experience.
“New York City, where I have made much of my work over the years, especially the sculptures, is a place that brings
you to yourself. It makes you face yourself. ‘You can take a subway to your soul.’ Yes, exactly. It forces you simultaneously
to find yourself and to lose yourself — and you must be ready.”13 Here, in this sculpture, we get the feeling that Christian is

rounded pagoda and tree forms we will forever associate with his work beginning in 1986. The gods of prophecy are often
dark, as are the members of this sculpture, which appear to have arrived at their existence through rack and ruin; but this
is only because they are, in fact, both the instrument and object of sacrifice, experience, and soul. They propheticize the
language his sculptures will speak in the future.
Die Sprache des Menschen (Fig. 14), or The Language of Man, is made up of five parts. All of which look like the archaeological
finds in Tulum, Mexico, particularly the Mayan Temple of the Descending God (Fig. 15). The paint having been worn
away by time, by the Caribbean wind and sea, makes these buildings all white and rather dilapidated-looking. The belief is
that the skewed forms were a result of having been built late in their civilization, when the Mayans had forgotten how to
build. Whether this is actually the case is still a matter of speculation, but they configure nonetheless very beautiful and
powerful forms, especially in the way the city is sited high on a cliff, overlooking the dazzling blue Caribbean Sea. Although
clearly weather-beaten, these buildings orchestrate a site no less moving than that of Delphi in Greece or Machu Picchu in
Peru. When he made the sculpture, he admits that “I may have been thinking about South America, but I did not go. The
fact is, I made it in New York City.”16
Here, in Christian’s sculpture, we see the same formal method of construction as we saw before, namely the stacking
of elements or the accumulation into forms. Made of plaster and painted white, they, too, look as if time had had its way
with them. While they look vaguely figurative, suggesting the female form, especially the fourth and fifth units, they have a
distinctly architectural feeling. For works that are generated by and large from relatively straight lines and right angles,
they all project in the end a rather precarious look, as if as structures they might not be with us much longer, although they
also convince us that they have already survived many years, and there is nothing to tell us that they will not survive for
many more. Their various levels and little niches suggest places of sanctuary or refuge, and we wonder about their function
much as we might the temples of old. If a Minimalist esthetic comes to mind, it is only because we are not allowing the
cracks and furrows, the skewed forms, that predominate here to penetrate our own limited art historical template. Think
rather of the Lion Gate or the Tomb of Agamemnon (Fig. 16) in Mycenae.
Getting hold of ultimate meanings is not only not easy in Christian’s work, it is inadvisable. The title, for example, The
Language of Man, is so specific and yet so abstract that we have no real point of reference. Is the language of man “architecture,”
“art,” or the still more open-ended enterprise of symbol-making, in general? Or is the “language” he speaks that
of “woman,” in her most powerful and mesmerizing of manifestations, which lead to such inspired architectural and artistic
constructions as this sculpture by Christian?
22 years earlier, in 1981, when he made the sculpture, he wrote abstractly: “My work begins where the possibility of the
verbalization ends: beyond language. The outer and inner, the making and the material, are getting to the meta-language
tool of the expression.”17 Today, instead, he says, in a much clearer manner: “When you live in New York City, you see that
the language of Man is many languages.”18 In this context, let us ask: Do all the seams and furrows in these
sculptures embody the lips of man as they utter the body of woman; or are they the spirit of woman, in her most earthly embodiment,
permeating the most abstract forms of man? Before our very eyes, these very small works by Christian rise up to assume
the monumental forms of Memnon in the Egyptian desert (Fig. 17).
If these works, born of the imagination, lay claim so readily to history, perhaps it is because Christian, by this time a
known world traveller, allows all that he experiences to pass through his art. It is not his art, or any permanent or stagnant
model of it, that dictates to him, but the experience of life itself that determines the forms and shapes of his work. It is this
impulse, to allow himself to be absorbed by the people and things he experiences, that accounts for the variety in his work,
and the intense irregularities that affect even the most simple and geometrical of his forms.
In the last of the works to be analyzed here, Der heilige Mensch (Fig. 18), or The Holy Man, we get a form that is rather
larger but still very much related to those in the Language of Man sculpture, and very specifically related to hinter der Erfahrung.
Except that in The Holy Man, for the female shape of life form he has substituted what looks like a navel. Amid a
squarish, highly geometrical progression of forms, we find, at its very middle, a pronounced rounded form, that, in fact,
might suggest the clitoris, the female nipple, or the more androgynous belly button. Christian maintains: “It is very clear
that I am communicating with my work, and this kind of communication is very concrete: I make it visible. I’m trying to
build up a notion; this notion should say something about me in a decisive way, in the context of life, at the moment in
which I exist (or I am): I make a reference.”19
As we look at the sculpture more closely, at the dark patina of the bronze, the various furrows, lines, and subtle concavities,
we see once again a sculptor who has turned his obsession in life — namely life itself — into a form that would
take on the values of a holy experience. Or rather, what we see before us is a “man,” rather dark, with abstract, squarish
features, for whom experience itself has assumed the value and the forms of holiness. What stands before us is a god —
in the form of a man who does not merely worship women but asserts them as art and as the spirit’s most profound form
of expression.
Christian’s Holy Man emerges from the cave of conception abolishing all difference between life and art, knowledge
and experience, material and spirit. In 18-century Bengal, we find holy-water fonts in the shape of the yoni (Fig. 19). The
artist says, “The Holy Man depends upon a play on the word ‘holy’ in German, which etymologically means both ‘whole’ and
‘holy’.”20 He is the dark spectre standing in every shadow cast by the sun, awaiting each turn in life and the birth of every
new experience with the patience of a Buddha. Who is this Holy Man if he is not Everyman or the Wholeman [sic]? What are
his sculptures if they are not the light that shines at the center of each darkness, at the center of each soul! Or, as in the
case of this darkly patinated god, is he not the darkness that thrives at the center of each eye, like a pupil, an eternal student
of perception and life.



Palermo – Brussels – New York, May 2003




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