"Athena: Birth of Wisdom" by Candice Raquel Lee

Athena: Birth of Wisdom: (edition of 8), bronze
Size (in): 18H on a 14" square white marble base.
$3500 CAD including shipping

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The Sculpture: Traditional renditions of Athena's birth from ancient Grecian vases onward tend to depict Zeus full-length in a completely relaxed state with Athena emerging, also full-body, from his head. My work focuses instead on the two-faced head, an extremely ancient Eastern archetype embodying various dualities of the human condition: life and death, male and female, chaos and order, tragedy and comedy. I also show the physical agony of the god who is elsewhere spared the pangs of birthing. This can be seen as a feminist statement in that the male god suffers and desires wisdom that the goddess naturally possesses as part of her nature. Zeus's pain allegorically represents the difficult process of finding wisdom, of creating or giving birth to an Idea(l), whether in the realm of art or elsewhere.

Athena: Birth of Wisdom also depicts my subtle sense of humour, as I enjoy seeing the lusty seducer Zeus getting some come-uppance for his philandering in the form of this monster headache.

The contemplative side of the face is depicted in very realistic detail with a dark, earthy patina while Athena, the ideal, is represented in a smooth highly polished gold.

The Story: The story of Athena's birth obviously comes from Greek mythology. An oracle prophesied that Zeus's next male child with the goddess Metis would overthrow him as ruler of the gods. As a preventative measure, Zeus therefore tricked Metis into changing into a fly, then ate her.

After some time, Zeus developed a terrible headache. When the other Olympian gods came to discover what was wrong, Hermes (patron of physicians) decided that Zeus needed to have his head split open, a task undertaken with an axe by the blacksmith god Hephaestus. Out of Zeus's skull sprang Athena, fully grown and in a full armour. Because of her birth from the head, Athena became goddess of wisdom.

E-mail: candice@candiceraquel.com | Phone: 519.853.9037