Tuesday, September 16, 2008

can anyone guess why this awesome sculpture (Whitman campus) reminds me of Hinduism?

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Posted by Kevin Kim at 3:43 PM

7 comments:

Britt Elizabeth Verstegen said...

Wow. That is such a fluid, moving work of art. It appears to be in motion, forever spiraling into the heavens. It is wonderful to see a piece of art with movement.

Well, I will hazard a guess.

Um, does it remind you of Hinduism because Hinduism is a fluid Faith that is not fixed and codified but a "compilation of thousands of smaller belief systems"?

I can't wait to read your reasons.

September 16, 2008 at 3:57 PM
Jelly said...

It reminds you of "Aum?" (Om)

September 16, 2008 at 4:17 PM
Kevin Kim said...

B,

Well, that's a much better reason to be reminded of Hinduism than my reason. (And yes, absolutely: Hinduism isn't just one "ism.")

I should have taken the pic from a different angle; based on what I see on my BlackBerry screen, I'm not sure it's obvious that the sculpture is a spiral (hint).

By the way, campus-haunting geek that I am, I love campus art. Whitman's got some really good pieces on display, including this one.


Kevin

September 16, 2008 at 4:38 PM
Kevin Kim said...

J,

Alas, no! But that's not a bad guess, either.

I guess I should offer another hint: think abstractly.

Not much of a hint, I realize, but the idea is to move people away from guesses that are more concrete, e.g., specific utterances, specific deities, specific events, etc. When I saw the sculpture, it reminded me of something almost apodictic, something that's usually associated with Hinduism.


Kevin

September 16, 2008 at 4:42 PM
Britt Elizabeth Verstegen said...

Ok, how about this: The spiral represents the recurring creation and destruction of the universe spoken of in the Vedas? The motif of creation rebirthing itself time and again is constant.

BTW, I also enjoy outdoor sculpture, at universities, national parks or museums. One of my favorite is at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the place I played hooky when I was a kid.

Oh: I just got it!

You're thinking of reincarnation!

OK, what's my prize?

I heard you make an awesome Alfredo sauce.

September 16, 2008 at 4:49 PM
Kevin Kim said...

Britt,

Spiral time! You got it. Some people mistakenly refer to the Hindu conception of time and history as "cyclical," but I've never read or heard anywhere that Hindus believe that history repeats itself exactly. Instead, as Jacques Dupuis writes in his Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, the Hindu concept is better thought of as a spiral, in which we see something like cyclicality, but also nonrepetitiveness.

Kevin

September 16, 2008 at 4:56 PM
Anonymous said...

Best thing about that sculpture is that you can go over and spin it!

Worst thing is that it hasn't been oiled in a while, so everyone within a few hundred feet will know what you're doing.

September 16, 2008 at 7:26 PM

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