Editorial: Why Am I Symmetrical: Or Almost? Author(s): Pierre Szkely Source: Leonardo, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1990), pp.

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WHY

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FIRST PROPOSAL
Up until the day I had the honour of being invited by Denes Nagy to attend the interdisciplinary symposium "Symmetryof Structure", held in Budapest in 1988, I used to think that a certain number of my sculptures were almost symmetrical, like myself, and that a number of them are symmetrical,just as are a number of my contemporaries (Fig. 1).

SECOND PROPOSAL
Denes Nagy's letter had an effect on me similar to that of the legendary apple falling from Newton's head. Like that great 'savant' of universal attraction who posed the question, "Whydid the apple fall?"I asked myself more modestly, "Why am I symmetrical?"(Fig. 2).

THIRD PROPOSAL
The image of my favorite uncle, one-legged as a result of a traffic accident, has haunted me since my earliest childhood. He had great difficulty in moving around his room, leaning on the table, on a chair and on me, his nude, asymmetrical body stumbling. The artificial limb he had fitted could not, alas, replace flesh and bone. Obviously, the symmetry of two matching legs and two healthy arms are of tremendous importance in physical action. Someone with an arm in plaster or with crutches under the armpits serves to illustrate this point (Fig. 3).

FOURTH PROPOSAL
The practice of two ears, two eyes, two nostrils, two buttocks, as well as that of double internal organs, is vital. The slightest accident is painfully felt. Almost all living beings, humans and beasts, have bodies that are symmetrical in structure. Zoology's inexhaustible capacity for imagination does not appear to include asymmetrical animals, apart from those deformed or adapted. Why are symmetrical structures so prevalent in art, architecture and any kind of human enterprise? Why are my sculptures, with their powerful anthropomorphic structures, so symmetrical? Because symmetry is the foundation of the world, whether mineral or biological. Crystalsare symmetrical towards axes or planes, biological molecules are dextrogyre or levogyre. Louis Pasteur used this property as early as 1850 for the separation of two symmetrical forms of the same organic molecules. This was one of the first tiny openings in the understanding of the structure of living material (Fig. 4).

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LEONARDO, Vol. 23, No. 4, p. 339-345, 1990

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Fig. 1. La Puberte (Puberty), pink marble on gray marble, 2.4 x 1.3 x .9 m, 1981. (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal)

Fig. 2. Nu primitiv (Primitive Nude), pink granite and rock crystal, 2 x 1.3 x .9 m, 1986. (Clarte Museum, Perros-Guirec, France)

Fig. 3. L'Oiseauimpossible(The Impossible Bird), silver granite, 1.7 x 3.2 x .8 m, 1988. (Szekely Square, Sapporo, Japan)

immobile(Astraddle Motionless), white marble, Fig. 4. Chevauche .35 x .4 x .18 m, 1980. (Private collection of Francois Mitterrand, Paris)

Fig. 7. (Right) Le poids de la nuit (The Weight of the Night), black granite from Sweden and onyx from Turkey, .5 x .14 x.14 m, 1980. (Private Collection, Paris)

Fig. 5. Antee(Antaeus), pink granite (sculpted by flame), 2.2 x 1.4 x 1 m, 1981. (Antes Square, Verriere-le-Buisson, France)

black basaltfrom Fig. 6. Blackis Beautiful, Belgium and onyx from Turkey, .4 x .3 x .24 m, 1932. (Collection of the Elf Aquitaine Foundation, Paris)

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FIlFH PROPOSAL
I have alwaysconsidered my sculptures as living beings. As I work on them in my atelier-delivery room, I bring into the world forms created simultaneously of stone and the imagination, of body and soul, in short, human archetypes. Neither abstract nor figurative, my sculptures are significative. Whether they fail to suggest any known form, or whether they evoke flora, fauna or man, each time they signify that which is human: the humanity of existence. For more than 40 years now, I have given my sculptures names such as Four-Legged Angel, Human Bird, BipedFish, Geometrical Goddess, RainbowBearer,Ornithological Dragonand so on, to serve as an unending reminder of the great family of symmetrical beings inhabiting our earth. Most living creatures, and the vertebrates in particular, are strikingly symmetrical, and minor internal dissymmetry such as the existence and placement of one liver, one heart and one appendix does not eliminate the basic pattern. Moreover, single glands such as the pituitary or pineal (the third eye?) as well as the brain have two lobes. Symmetry is even more prevalent among highly evolved animals such as mammals than among more primitive creatures. Even after millions of years of evolution and selection, dissymmetry has not succeeded in making a major breakthrough! (Fig. 5).

SIXTH PROPOSAL
It is not surprising that my sculptures should stand upright on two, three or four legs, or that their language of abstract forms should signify anatomical forms, or even that they should be symmetrical around a central plane, like millions of other living beings. This biological 'necessity' for symmetry is probably based on the processes involved in fertilization and cell division. The first crucial steps in the life of a living organism are the first divisions following fecundation. The initial cell, resulting from the fusion between male and female, begins by dividing itself into two identical cells. We have experimental proof of this identity since, if by accident, these two cells are separated, they produce identical human beings (identical twins). Under normal conditions, each cell will divide and differentiate to produce one symmetrical embryo. Life and humans are therefore symmetrical at the very first step. It is no wonder that some memories of this are still present, decades later, in my feelings and in my mind as a sculptor (Fig. 6).

SEVENTH PROPOSAL
My sculptures differ, however, from all other beings because, among other things, they move a good deal less. They swing or sway sometimes, they are transported from one country to another as the occasion arises, but their movement is essentially static, as, for example, that of a finger pointed to the sky. This static movement may arouse spiritual feelings in spectators, in that their mental psyches are stimulated. Art lovers may also experience physical movements: a desire to move around or to caress the work. As a result, my sculptures live in symbiosis with their spectators. They only live when someone is looking at them. Their symmetrical anthropomorphology and zoology predispose them to serve as archetypal mirrors held up to spectators who see themselves as part of the image (Fig. 7).

EIGHTH PROPOSAL
It is rare for me to find myself in a position of perfect symmetry:when driving my car, lifting a block of stone, reading a book seated in an armchair or coming

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together with my wife. Among those rare cases, some are static, others dynamic. As for my sculpture, it is alwaysstatic on account of its mass, and alwaysdynamic through its form. It reconciles these two opposing elements. Sometimes it is symmetrical, like a being in motion; nevertheless, this does not affect its original symmetrical structure (Fig. 8). It retains its reference to it.

NINTH PROPOSAL
The analogy of symmetrical beings was well observed, appreciated and recreated by Taino artists before their baptism in blood at the hands of Christopher Columbus's soldiers. On the island of Santo Domingo, it gave me great pleasure to look on the symmetrical, half-million-year-old trace of the structure of an iguana. The central axis carried a number of limbs arranged as human hands and feet. The brain, heart and genitals were shown by central points surrounded by a circle. I could see a close resemblance to man in this sketch. For example, there were three extremely long fingers at the end of each limb. Was this characteristic of iguana of that period? Maria K6nig, German scholar and writer on prehistoric art who died recently, might have explained to me that these trinitarian signs, as old as the works of prehistoric artists, referred to the three phases of the moon. The central phase, nothingness, sums up the other two: waxing and waning. In the same way, the central axis in the diagram of the iguana brought together the two symmetrical sides. The two lobes of the brain, the two sides of the heart and the ancient duality of the genitals were assembled in a manner similar to that of the human body (Fig. 9).

TENTH PROPOSAL
My face is almost symmetrical. It also has a central axis. My forehead, nose, mouth, tongue and chin still bear the scar of their original duality. These unified, symmetrical forms express personality as much as my two eyes. My third eye, the invisible pineal eye, the frontal eye of thousands of Buddhist statues, is as useful to me in the practice of my art as the other two (Fig. 10).

ELEVENTH PROPOSAL
It seems to me then, that the constituents of my corporal symmetry are not two in number but instead three: the right side, the left side and the chain of central organs (Fig. 11).

TWELFTH PROPOSAL
This then is my preliminary approach to the question, Why am I symmetrical? I am symmetrical so as to be in a situation that permits awareness of the unity of duality, and this, principally, thanks to my central organs. I embrace my beloved with both arms while their central point, my heart, begins to beat even stronger. The two arms and the heart: symmetry and its centre, the third reality, unity (Fig. 12).

THIRTEENTH PROPOSAL
The first question remains to be answered: why are my sculptures, like so many others, symmetrical?Without doubt, to act as a mirror for the spectator. While all our mirrors falsify their message by interchanging right for left, the mirrorsculpture hardly deceives at all, for it shows the essential: unity, the third reality (Fig. 13). (The first two realities are the dualistic notions of right and left or the

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Fig. 8. Pereancetre (Ancestral Father), red marble, .3 x .27 x .2 m, 1980. (Paris)

Fig. 9. Porteuse de Germe(Seed Recipient), pink marble from Portugal with blue stone from Belgium, .42 x .17x.16m, 1980.

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Fig. 11 La Sagesse(Wisdom), gray granite, 1.1 x 3 x 1.4 m, 1973. (Jardin de la meditation des ages de la vie, Valenton, France)

Fig. 10. Libreequilibre(Free Equilibrium), pink granite from Brittany,France and black granite from Sweden, .23 x .38 x .13 m, 1979.

Fig. 12. Oiseaumineral (Mineral Bird), blue granite, 3.4 x 2.1 x 1.8 m, 1981. (Champagne-sur-Oise, France)

Fig. 13. La Recontre(The Encounter), gray granite, .9 x 3.6 x .9 m, 1973. (Jardin de la meditation des ages de la vie, Valenton, France)

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Fig. 14. (Top left). Esprit(Spirit), gray granite, 4.5 x 5.1 x 2.2 m, 1968. (State Technical School for Boys, Albi, France) Fig. 15. (Top right). Corps(Body), red stone, .38 x .43 x .09 m, 1972. (Private collection of Pierrejoly, Bures-sur-Yvette,France) Fig. 16. (Left).Joie (Joy), white stone, 3.2 x 2.3 x 1.4 m, 1962. (Open-Air Museum, Sankt Margarethen, Austria) Fig. 17. (Bottom left). Contact(Contact), gray basalt, 2.4 x 1.9 x .9 m, 1963. (Zoological Gardens Square, Berlin, Germany) (Rainbow Bearer), colored Fig. 18. (Bottom right). Porteusede l'arc-en-ciel marble from Portugal, .47 x .45 x .24 m, 1989. (Odeon Gallery, Paris)

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contrary. The axis of symmetry is in itself a third reality, but it signifies also the unity of the whole vision.)

FOURTEENTH PROPOSAL
In my view, the third reality is, like the third eye, a state of passionate consciousness. In Japanese, it is called satori.Duality, the natural and habitual knowledge we have of ourselves and of our environment, is not suppressed but rather is encompassed. It gives a unique sense to antithesis. It is the pivot set between the two pans, opposed and symmetrical, of the scales. It is the third way proposed by Buddha. However identical, symmetry is dry and monotonous and may even be dangerous (see Narcissus!) without dissymmetry. No one of my sculptures and not one human being is perfectly symmetrical. Mating, reproduction, but also love and communication, are made possible in the human through symmetry and complementary dissymmetry (Fig. 14).

FlitFEENTH PROPOSAL
Beyond light and shadow, there is visible form. Beyond clarity and obscurity, there is the 'lumen'. Beyond noise and silence, there is the decibel. Beyond heat and cold, there is the degree. Beyond the sculptor and sculpture, there is human awareness, that of the spectator. Neither creators nor creations, spectators personify the third reality. They are, to some extent, the targets of sculptors and their sculptures. Moreover, both concepts, symmetry and dissymmetry, refer to the numbers 'one' and 'two', to unity and duality, to becoming one from two halves, to the necessity for integration between two parts or two opposites for any biological or personal growth. Finally, these two concepts relate to creation and creativity in art, science or any human adventure (Fig. 15).

SIXTEENTH PROPOSAL
Beyond the symmetrical duality of art and science, there is a consciousness between sculptor and biologist, the meeting of two awarenesses, without hindrance or limitation. This understanding, this coming together, this living symmetry takes place today around some almost-symmetrical sculptures, carved out of marble and granite (Fig. 16).

SEVENTEENTH PROPOSAL
My sculptures, made from durable materials, immortalise their presence in the present, in this third reality between the symmetrical past and future (Fig. 17).

TERMINUS
After my death, I wish that my body, in a seated, symmetrical position, will be petrified, transformed into hard stone. Thanks to the science of the future, this posthumous sculpture may be seen as a third reality, as the omnipresence of this notion of symmetry transcends that of the organic and inorganic-unifying symmetrical sculpture and the symmetrical sculptor (Fig. 18).
PIERRE SZEKELY Editor Honorary

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