Gutzon Borglum

1
Gutzon Borglum
2
Timeline

• March 25, 1867-born in St. Charles, Idaho
• 1874- moved from Idaho to Fremont when he was
  seven
• 1890- his painting Staging in California is
  first work to be declared a masterpiece.
• 1901- one of his sculptures was the first to be
  purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art while
  sill alive
• 1908- Borglum won a competition for a statue of
  General Philip Sheridan, which was erected in
  Sheridan circle In Washington D.C.

3
Timeline (Cont.)

• 1927-1941- carved out Washington, Jefferson,
  Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelts faces into the
  Mount Rushmore monument
• July 3 1929- Unveiled North Carolina State
  monument
• March 6, 1941- died

4
North Carolina state monument

• Made in honor of the North Carolina soldiers who
  died at the battle of Gettysburg.
• Unveiled July 3 1929
• Made from bronze
• The details in the sculptures give them a strong
  sense of texture
• The figures also show an impeccable level of
  proportion to each other, and themselves

5
The Avaitor

• Memorial for James R. McConnell, a pilot killed
  in WWII flying for Lafayette Escadrille
• located in the University of Virginia
• The positioning of the figure creates a unique
  space and form
• Positioning of the arms and legs gives motion to
  the sculpture

6
Conception

• Made in 1904
• Made from marble
• One of the 170
• sculptures Gutzon
• made in his career
• The shadows of the sculpture create depth in the
  sculpture
• The rocks texture is balanced between the smooth
  head of the figure, and the rock it is coming out
  of.

7
Mount Rushmore

• Made from 1927-1941
• Gutzon died before it was completed, and his son
  (Lincoln) finished his work
• The faces are carved in a way that the faces meld
  with the planes of the mountainside
• The position of the faces to the sun creates a
  constantly changing value

8
Carving out Rushmore

• The system to carving out Mt. Rushmore was mainly
  Dynamite.
• over 90 of the work was done by dynamite
• After blasting away the major areas, the faces
  were perfected with chisels

9
Quotes

• And I remember very distinctly that beauty and
  form and the making of things seemed to be a very
  idle kind of pastime until I myself formed some
  definite ideals for my own life, quite apart from
  my own work, and then the work shaped itself to
  fulfill that life.
• And there a new thought seized me...the scale of
  that mountain peak.... It came over me in an
  almost terrifying manner that I had never sensed
  what I was planning.
• The following 2 are responses of local Native
  Americans
• We all hate Mount Rushmore,
• Its a sacred mountain that has been desecrated.
  Its like a slap in the face to ussalt in the
  woundsas if a statue of Adolf Hitler was put up
  in the middle of Jerusalem. 

10
Borglums purpose

• Borglum Had lived his life as a very patriotic
  American
• Almost all his works centered around the glory of
  American heritage
• Tried to convey the glory and virtues of great
  American figures,

11
Cited works

• http//www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/notables/borglum.htm
  l
• http//www.shs.nebo.edu/Museum/borglum.html
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutzon_Borglum
• http//www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/may
  /da_rushmore.php?page1
• http//www.nps.gov/moru/historyculture/index.htm