Adam Newly Created 1913

Curator: Welcome. Before us stands Svend Rathsack's arresting wooden sculpture, "Adam Newly Created," from 1913, currently residing here at the SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst. Editor: The figure appears incredibly raw. You see the chisel marks everywhere on the nude form, and its incomplete limbs lend it this brutal feeling, like it was torn from the very material it's made from. Curator: The figure is presented nude, a deliberate reference to the biblical Adam. Consider, though, that it's "newly" created. The title frames this piece as a commentary on the very moment of genesis and existence, not the idealized Adam, fully formed. The absent facial features only intensify the sensation of a new soul entering our world. Editor: The medium, the visible tooling marks... It's rough. The labor invested in this thing feels extremely visible, far from high-polished marbles or bronzes that suggest refinement and eternity. It's literally made by human hands, which, perhaps, invites one to ask, 'who creates whom?' Is it Man and the material that beget the idea? Or is the 'newly created' the chisel, wood, and skill to make this object? Curator: Intriguing thought. We've had a history of interpreting Adam as representing perfect creation, however, here, the incompleteness reflects the expressionist concern with raw, immediate experience, perhaps also a reference to spiritual anxieties about mankind's imperfect existence. Editor: Precisely. And by literally exhibiting the making process—almost as if this Adam came kicking and screaming into our world—Rathsack rejects that neat dichotomy between craft and concept we often see in art history. Curator: Perhaps, it reflects our own individual struggles with identity in a quickly modernizing world? Editor: Indeed. It seems Rathsack is grappling with both material constraints and existential anxieties. "Adam Newly Created" is both creation and the record of its own making, inseparable. Curator: So, is that a mark of newness or of the heavy toil that preceded it? An open question perhaps for you to reflect on.