by Esther Fishman
There they stand, on the top of Bernard Maybeck’s Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. Some face out to sea, some would look toward the interior of the building, if they were blessed with faces and the ability to see. They are usually called The Weeping Women. They were sculpted as part of the explosion of public decoration that defined the Pan-Pacific International Exposition of 1916, and have dominated the skyline ever since.
I wonder about them. They seem so alive. Perhaps it is the tension in their shoulders, the way the ornate drapery weighs them down, and also shows the human shape beneath. Maybe it is that I can’t help wondering what they are doing way up there. Do they speak to each other at night, after the sun goes down behind the golden gate, and even the most intrepid, or enchanted visitor has gone in to dinner? Are they speaking now, some arcane language that we do not understand, or interpret as sea breeze, or the cry of birds in the lagoon?
Maybeck’s design for the Palace was so unexpected that the public clamored to know where his inspiration had come from. In a treatise published in 1915, Maybeck references the painting called Isle of the Dead by Arnold Bocklin. It’s easy to see the connection. The painting shows a robed figure, assumed to be Charon, ferrying a barge to a mysterious island. It is a mournful scene, full of a brooding darkness. Maybeck writes that he wanted to separate the visitor from the festive atmosphere of the Exposition, to provide a mood of pensive rest, and prepare the weary fairgoer for the art displayed within.
I can imagine the women, not weeping so much as hypnotized by the sea — the eternal movement that they see from their perch. The waves come in and go out, in and out. We all feel it, the pull of the waves, and I think the stone women do too. It might appear like the elephant herd the characters in Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves —Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda, Louise, Bernard — imagined when they were children. There they are, in the distance. They take no notice of the human children hiding in the bushes, but are moving, swaying as if alive, even though they are in reality only the distant hills.
Later in the novel, Bernard narrates a long section about his childhood friends who are still his friends. They navigate the world with him, and the fact that they may or may not be in the room is irrelevant. The group exists as one entity, moving freely through time and space. I wonder if this might be a clue to understanding the Women.
They are all made from one mold, quite literally. They have been standing there, looking away from human life, for over a century. If they decided one night to all switch places, if that is a power they possess, we would be none the wiser. Yet, interchangeable as they are, they are evocative of exactly what one of their creators intended — a brooding, yet restful existence.
They have their own hidden world that we can not enter. Perhaps they whisper to each other about the sea, and the passage of time, and their own group existence. While we are here, we can contemplate them for as long as we like, just as Bernard contemplates his friends.
People die, but statues do not, even after the artists that created them are long gone. They have a place in the world, for all that. Perhaps that is what makes them so mysterious — and compelling.
Esther Fishman is a reviewer, poet, and memoirist. She is a long-time resident of San Francisco, and enjoys long walks there, especially at the edges. Her poetry has appeared in Deep Overstock, and online at poetrysuperhighway.com and nudebruce.com. and is forthcoming in Adanna Journal. Her reviews have been published online by raintaxi.com and thereviewreview.net.
After the Art 