Day Trips: Oregon and Urbana, Illinois / The Blind

The Blind – by Lorado Taft

Modeled [plaster]: 1908 / Cast bronze : 1988.

The sculpture was cast in bronze in 1988, that is nearly after nearly 80 years of plaster model in 1908,
and more than 50 years after the death of Lorado Taft in 1936.

Taft presented the working plaster model [1908] to the Oregon Public Library.
The bronze cast sculpture [1988] is placed in the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The images of “The Blind” sculpture, at both at Oregon Public Library and the Krannert Art Museum in Urbana, are posted here.

The Blind statue was originally inspired by a play performed one summer at the Eagle’s Nest.
The play was based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s “Les Aveugles.”

The Blind - by Lorado Taft / Plaster Cast Working Model / Oregon Public Library, Oregon, IL.

The Blind – by Lorado Taft / Working plaster cast / Oregon Public Library, Oregon, IL.

The Blind – by Lorado Taft / Above image is of working plaster cast [1908] at the Oregon Public Library.

The Blind statue was originally inspired by a play by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. It was performed one summer at the Eagle’s Nest. The play was based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s “Les Aveugles,” meaning the Blind. In the final act of the play, there were 12 blind men, 6 men and 6 women, under the care of one old priest. The old priest took them for a walk in dense forest. They sit and rest in the forest for some time, and then, they realized that their guide, the priest had died. They all panicked. Then they realized that a child in the group, who was not blind, was their only hope. The child became a symbol of hope and salvation for all.

The statue depicts a dozen blind people, some with eyes closed and others with no eyes at all. One woman holds a baby, whose eyes are open. The Blind was Taft’s allegorical treatment of the figure of a child as the visionary; he wrote, “This is the artist’s moment… it is the symbol of hope that is worthy of perpetuation.”

Taft freed himself of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.