Visual Traditions of Ad Astra
Casting your gaze across the wide sky of Topeka, Kansas, the highest point of the skyline draws your eye even higher. The Ad Astra sculpture by Richard Bergen, Sr. surmounts the Topeka capitol dome. Standing regally at 22 feet tall and weighing 4,420 pounds (roughly the height of a 2 story house and the weight of a small Asian elephant), this Native American figure aims a drawn bow to the sky. Clad in loincloth, moccasins, and feathers and colored greenish-white from a chemical patina, Ad Astra presents a classically contrapposto pose: weight planted on the right foot, left leg bent a step in front with shoulders slanting in a contrasting angle to the hips. The upper half of the body is angled toward the sky, arms and arrow forming a line pointed toward the stars. This idealized portrait of Kansas’ Native American history portrays a stoic, atemporal figure. Referring to neither specific time nor specific place, the work is vivid even if picturesque: a noble savage of the plains.
The Importance of Contrapposto
Most of these figures share a very obvious characteristic, and it isn't the bow. The pose all these figure hold is known as contrapposto. An Italian term meaning counterpoise or opposite, contrapposto is a dynamic position that is meant to create an illusion of past or future movement. The first use of contrapposto goes as far back as 480 BC, with the pose remaining popular through the classical period and undergoing a revival during the Renaissance. One of the most well-known examples of contrapposto is Michelangelo’s David. The contrasting slope of the shoulder compared to the hips illustrates the ‘opposite’ nature of contrapposto with one leg, the engaged leg, appearing to carry the weight of the figure while the other is positioned slightly to the side, or in the case of Ad Astra, to the front. Clad in loincloth, moccasins, and feathers and colored greenish-white from a chemical patina, Ad Astra presents a classically contrapposto pose: weight planted on the right foot, left leg bent a step in front with shoulders slanting in a contrasting angle to the hips.