Description
Timothy Easton (British, born 1943)
Gilt bronze sculpture “Marsyas Evolving”
H. 27 cm. W. 12 cm. D. 16 cm.
Signed and numbered 6/9 on the base.
Marsyas, a follower of Dionysus, challenged Apollo, the God of Mugic, to a contest after finding a magic flute discarded by Athene who laid a curse on anyone who picked it up. By Apollo’s cunning, Marsyas lost the dual and his punishment was to be tied to a tree and flayed alive. The contest was concerned with the relative powers of Dionysian darkness and Apollonian clarity so that the flaying was a tragic ordeal of purification by which the ugliness of the outward man was discarded and the beauty of his inward self revealed. Timothy Easton’s revolving bronze sculpture, Margyas Evolving’ shows the three stages from dying , rebirth as the lower figure escapes from the flayed Marsyas, reborn and then released through the brain in the skull.