Man Throwing a Life Belt 1924

Svend Rathsack made this sculpture, “Man Throwing a Life Belt,” out of plaster, but when, we don’t know exactly. There is a raw, almost brutal quality to the carving of this figure. Look at the life belt itself. It is thick and clumsy, and the man’s hands are wrapped tightly around it. The whole piece has a simplified, angular quality. It's as though Rathsack isn't trying to trick us with any surface illusion. The marks of the making are all there, in the rough hewn surfaces and asymmetrical form. I keep coming back to his stance, legs splayed, leaning back into the throw. It's a moment of dynamic tension, frozen in time. There's an urgency, a raw vulnerability to the form. He reminds me of some of the German Expressionist sculptors, like Ernst Barlach, who were also grappling with how to represent human emotion through simplified forms. This feels like a conversation about how to be a body in the world. A very physical conversation.