Split-Head With Numbers by David Gil for Bennington Potters

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Introducing a semi-abstract stoneware sculpture created by artist David Gill for Bennington Potters. It features a head with imprinted numbers, … Read more Introducing a semi-abstract stoneware sculpture created by artist David Gill for Bennington Potters. It features a head with imprinted numbers, made of two halves attached to a lucite stand.
In the 1950s, Gill co-founded Bennington Potters with other prominent artists to make limited artwork more accessible. This particular piece, from the 1960s, bears the stamp "Bennington Potters/Bennington//Vermont * 1850.

A central division appears while offering an illusion of connectivity. When viewed head-on, the head is cleaved, each side revealing a face embedded with numbers and the dollar symbol in an almost surreal manner. There is no symmetry in the number of inlays, underlining the fact that our two cerebral hemispheres are different, each with its own specific role yet complementary and working together. The artist's aesthetic choices suggest a deliberate duality and abstraction, raising the question of interpretation.

The central split of the head naturally leads us to discuss the fragmentation of consciousness, potentially symbolizing a divided mind grappling with different facets of its identity, compounded by the presence of the dollar symbol, prompting us to question our incorporation as individuals into a consumerist society.

Moreover, the mid-century, the era of this artwork's creation, evokes a period of upheaval and innovation, where art frequently explored themes of rupture and reconstruction. The head, the seat of thought engraved with these symbols of measurement and calculation, may represent how the mentality of that time submitted to mass marketing techniques became preoccupied with analysis, segmentation, and the relationship to consumption.

Art, with this piece, functions as a mirror reflecting both individual and collective concerns. Beyond the simplicity of this visage, honoring some of Brancusi's sculptures, Gill offers us affordable work, economizing on details while emphasizing expression through his way of working on facial features—with exaggeratedly open eyes and big ears, perhaps to better see and listen to oneself.

It appeals to art enthusiasts, numerologists, psychoanalysts, or anyone fascinated by numbers and their mysteries! One thing is certain: combining these numbers will undoubtedly yield the winning lottery ticket.

B I O - ( from Vermont Arts and Living)

Artist David Gill (1922-2002) was born to immigrant parents and grew up in Harlem, New York. The timing came into play when he was welcomed to make art under President Roosevelt’s arts-friendly Works Progress Administration. Gill was hired in 1939 as a teenager to publicly sculpt pottery as a demonstration at the World’s Fair in New York. He attended New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, serving time in the Merchant Marines during WWII amidst his studies. Gill then moved to Bennington, Vermont, with plans to open a design studio. He collaborated with other modern artists and designers and formed Cooperative Design, which Gill later changed to Bennington Potters. He was the driving force of a collaboration of famous mid-20th-century artists that produced affordable, limited-edition ceramic items. By the 1970s, David Gill and Bennington Potters had established a studio that was revered for quality art available to the masses. See less