Unfinished (Breakdown) by Irving Burman, ArtworxTO, High Park, Etobicoke, Toronto, ON
Excerpt from webapp.driftscape.com/map/4702259e-eaa7-11eb-8000-bc1c5a8...:
Unfinished (Breakdown) by Irving Burman, High Park: These two large blocks of stone were intended to be made into a sculpture but the artist, Irving Burman, suffered a breakdown and was unable to complete the work. He had been invited to participate in the 1967 International Sculpture Symposium here in High Park, one of twelve sculptors who were furnished with materials and supplies, given a place to stay at the Nature Centre just ahead and paid the grand total of $2,000 for their work on the understanding that their work would be gifted to the City at the end of the project.
Burman decided to work in stone. He had already completed a stone sculpture in Montreal's Mount Royal Park in a similar event in 1964, the first of its kind in North America, and it was perhaps because of his involvement in that event that he was selected as a finalist for this one. But the task was too much, after a few chiselled marks he gave up, and abandoned the project. His two stones were placed on a pedestal by the City, inviting us to speculate on what might have been.
In the end, his work stands as a monument to possibility, and a statement that an artist's journey is often one of trial and error.
Toronto-born Irving Burman was a painter and designer. In 1958 he began working as a sculptor. Burman was concerned with the horrible effects of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his sculpture, Road Back, created in 1962, is formed of six statues arranged in a semi-circle, expressing a critical reflection on war.
Unfinished (Breakdown) by Irving Burman, ArtworxTO, High Park, Etobicoke, Toronto, ON
Excerpt from webapp.driftscape.com/map/4702259e-eaa7-11eb-8000-bc1c5a8...:
Unfinished (Breakdown) by Irving Burman, High Park: These two large blocks of stone were intended to be made into a sculpture but the artist, Irving Burman, suffered a breakdown and was unable to complete the work. He had been invited to participate in the 1967 International Sculpture Symposium here in High Park, one of twelve sculptors who were furnished with materials and supplies, given a place to stay at the Nature Centre just ahead and paid the grand total of $2,000 for their work on the understanding that their work would be gifted to the City at the end of the project.
Burman decided to work in stone. He had already completed a stone sculpture in Montreal's Mount Royal Park in a similar event in 1964, the first of its kind in North America, and it was perhaps because of his involvement in that event that he was selected as a finalist for this one. But the task was too much, after a few chiselled marks he gave up, and abandoned the project. His two stones were placed on a pedestal by the City, inviting us to speculate on what might have been.
In the end, his work stands as a monument to possibility, and a statement that an artist's journey is often one of trial and error.
Toronto-born Irving Burman was a painter and designer. In 1958 he began working as a sculptor. Burman was concerned with the horrible effects of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his sculpture, Road Back, created in 1962, is formed of six statues arranged in a semi-circle, expressing a critical reflection on war.