cover image Between Water and Heaven: Carl Milles: Search for American Commissions

Between Water and Heaven: Carl Milles: Search for American Commissions

Elisabeth Liden. Almqvist & Wiksell International, $0 (127pp) ISBN 978-0-8390-0365-6

Swedish sculptor Milles migrated to the U.S. in 1930 with the aim of doing epic works, a departure from the small-scale creations that had won him fame in Europe. His gift for translating myth and fable into tall marble, stone or onyx figures was at odds with both abstract modernism and realism, and his public statues caught on mainly in the Midwest. This illustrated study, which reads like a dissertation, explores how popular taste, politics and esthetics helped decide which commissions Milles won or lost. Examples of his monuments include Meeting of the Waters, whose nude humans and naiads outraged Catholics in St. Louis; the bronze Jonah and the Whale ; Man and Nature, pinewood kitsch in Rockefeller Center. The artist's identification with Mussolini's fascism is not satisfactorily explored. (October)