American, born 1942
Hammering Man, 1984-85 Painted steel plate, Cor-ten steel, and motor, 240 x 108 x 18 1/2 in. (609.6 x 274.3 x 47 cm.)
Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Dallas, Texas
1985.A.06
Label Text
Huge in scale, with head bent and motorized arm continuously moving up and down, Hammering Man signifies both the drudgery and heroism of labor. The artist himself has stressed that the figure has an overlay of personal, political, and social meaning: "the Hammering Man is a worker, and I idolize the worker in myself. At the same time, it seems that the boring, monotonous repetition of the moving arm implies the fate of the mechanistic world." As another commentary on the fate of the individual in the world of modern technology, Borofsky has signed all of his work since early in his career with sequential numbers rather than a signature.
www.borofsky.com