The most famous beast-like sculpture in the college town of Athens, Georgia, is probably not a bulldog. It is an 11-foot-tall welded steel horse, an abstract maze of undulations and crescents, created at the University of Georgia in 1954 by visiting Chicago sculptor Abbott Pattison.
When Pattison's giant horse was first lifted by crane from the basement of the university's art building that spring, it was unlike anything the campus had ever seen, a cage-like structure made of pointed ribs. It had a central section, a flat cubist plane, and an undulating square horse body. -Remove the mane and tail. I could tell it was a horse, but it wasn't a classic equestrian carving. The work excited many people on campus.
Last spring, the sculpture, briefly named “Steel Horse” and then “Pegasus” by the sculptor, but more commonly known as the Iron Horse, was pulled from a concrete pad in a cornfield outside Athens for preservation. When it was removed, part 32 was missing and there was a hole. There were deep scars from decades of etching and graffiti, and a gunshot wound to the neck. Its hooves were rusted the color of Georgia clay.
Statues on college campuses have long served as lightning rods for widespread issues and debates in society. But exactly why the Iron Horse was attacked by students may always be a mystery.
“There's so much mystery and misinformation surrounding this sculpture,” says the artist, who, along with Athens-based conservator Amy Jones Abbe, spent six months restoring the sculpture to its original state. said Donald Cope, the designer and metal fabricator who restored it. “It has a legend and an aura about it.”
Cope painstakingly repaired the corrosion, recreated missing parts (all but one for which no photographic support could be found), and mimicked the artist's sturdy welds. Until then, the Iron Horse had never appeared in its complete form since its introduction 70 years ago.
Scholars today have difficulty distinguishing between earlier significant large-scale modern steel public sculptures in the South.
“If I were teaching at the University of Georgia and I wanted to divide my class between contemporary and traditional art, I could use this work as a perfect pivot,” said the University of Georgia professor of contemporary art history. Professor David Raskin says: the Art Institute of Chicago, where Pattison taught in the 1940s and '50s;
For several hours after it was first installed on the University of Georgia campus, the sculpture stood intact on the lawn between the men's dormitories. But curious crowds began to gather, and by nightfall hundreds of students had mounted their horses, scrawled graffiti on them (“What the hell is this?”) and shoved manure under their tails. and tying two balloons together, among other humiliating acts. between the hind legs. An old tire caught fire underneath, and the fire department was called in to quell the flames and the mob.
“Essentially, we're seeing a reaction against modernism,” said William U. Eiland, director of the Georgia Museum of Art from 1992 to 1992. I didn't,” he said. Founded in 2023, it has promoted the preservation of sculptures over the years. “They were responding to change.”
It was a “whirlwind time” on campus, Eiland added. Mr. Eiland wrote a biography of Lamar Dodd, an influential art department dean at the time. It was the era of McCarthyism and red-baiting, the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated schools, campus dress codes and women's curfews. Did the Iron Horse represent something subversive or unknown? As some have suggested, its cubist lines are reminiscent of the horse in Picasso's famous protest piece “Guernica.” Are they similar?
perhaps. However, several people involved in the incident later told the University of Georgia's alumni newsletter that the motive was a dispute between Pattison and the university community that was published in the campus newspaper, The Red & Black.
Is it a prank or a grudge?
Pattison came to the university as artist-in-residence in 1953 with a grant from the General Education Commission and support from John D. Rockefeller Sr. The artist passed away in 1999. was a widespread success, with more than 20 works exhibited to the public in the Chicago area, and works acquired in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
He was initially well received in Athens, and newspapers reported that an exhibition of his work at the new academic Georgia Museum of Art was extended due to popularity. Students watched him carve his first commissioned work by hand on the campus lawn. The piece was an abstract representation of a mother and child made from an 8-foot-tall Georgia marble block that was installed next to the Fine Arts Building in the fall of that year. But student journalist Bill Shipp, writing for Red and Black, called the four-sided totem of polished curves and rough planes “ridiculously complex.” A cartoon of the sculpture was published alongside his story, with the caption: “This is a bird!” It's an airplane! No, that's…”
Then, one night when Pattison returned for the spring semester of 1954, a can of green paint had been placed on the modern marble.
Pattison wrote a letter to the editor, saying, “The green paint on my marble sculpture doesn't hurt me as much as the university, which casts a shadow of a presence of malice, ignorance, and intolerance.”
Two months later, the Iron Horse landed on the grass.
But for Don McMillian, then a veterinary student at the university who procured fertilizer in his Studebaker Commander convertible, it was just a year-end prank.
“It wasn't some big, deep, dark issue about art or anything,” said McMillian, now 91 and a retired veterinarian who lives in Jonesboro, Georgia. “It was just some crazy boys having fun.” (He noted that this was a time when panty raids were prevalent on campuses across the country.)
Pattison himself was offended. “I was rather shocked, to say the least, when I looked at that painting and saw all the manure and trash and things hanging there,” the artist said by William Vanderkloot He spoke about it in a 1981 documentary. Sculpture aired on PBS. “It was a pretty traumatic experience for me.”
The morning after the attack, university officials took the sculpture out of sight and hid it behind a barn off campus, where it remained for five years until horticulture professor L.C. Curtis received permission to bring it to his farm in Greene County. A few miles south of Athens. He placed it right off Georgia Route 15, where it would be visible to passing cars.
And the Iron Horse has been sitting there for decades, transforming from an outcast to an icon of sorts, a selfie destination, a landmark for visiting football fans, a symbol of the community, featured on town murals, brochures, and students' A list of things I want to do. McMillian, a veterinarian, visited the zoo several years ago to take photos for the first time since 1954.
For years, the university and the Curtis family have been arguing over the fate of the Iron Horse and its ownership. But for now, its future appears to be set in the cornfields.
The Curtis Farm was sold to the university in 2013 and renamed the Iron Horse Plant Science Farm, but the family retained ownership of the sculpture and the surrounding 400 square feet. Alice Hugel, granddaughter of L.C. Curtis, who died in 1980, said her family gave the sculpture to the university last January on the condition that the school restore it and return it to the farm. His mother, Patti Curtis, married LC Curtis' son Jack when the family acquired the sculpture.
The university did not disclose the cost of the repairs, other than to say in a statement that private funds were used. “This restoration is an important step in ensuring that the Iron Horse remains a part of the UGA experience,” said Eric Atkinson, the school's dean of students.
In late November, the Iron Horse was returned to pasture in a cornfield, where it now sits, painted shiny black, on a granite pedestal in Georgia.
But many believe the work should be returned to the main campus, where the artist intended it and where it would be better protected. One supporter is Harry Pattison, the son of a working artist who lives in Bellingham, Washington. He was only two years old when his father completed the Iron Horse. He said he had several conversations with his father about the sculpture's fate before his death.
“Abbott wanted it back where it was,” Pattison said. “He thought that someday the university would try to get it back.”
Outdoors for decades, the sculpture was exposed to the elements and campus hijinks. The horse was spray-painted at least twice by opposing soccer fans (and was spray-painted back to black by the Greek Knights, a Greek secret society that considers the horse a symbol). The underwear is in the shape of a hat that is placed over the bangs. Climbing on top of the horse became a habit and over time welding occurred. At one time, its skin was mottled with initials.
“It's like the price of celebrity for a horse,” said Alice Huegel, who along with her mother argued that the horse should remain on an accessible ranch.
“It's really amazing that this horse on campus, even if it was controversial, was able to somehow at least focus people's attention on contemporary art, or even art itself,” said Raskin, the art history professor. That's true,” he pointed out.
Now, conservators Cope and Abbe hope the sculpture will enter a third phase, where it will be celebrated as a museum-worthy work rather than a roadside attraction.
“I just hope that people will have a different kind of appreciation for this work going forward, even if it's out of love,” said the former Metropolitan Museum of Art conservator. Abbe said.
On a recent windy afternoon, the Iron Horse stood quietly atop a hill, looking completely untouched since it was reinstalled about two months ago.
Oren Anderson, a senior at the university and a member of the Greek Order, said the organization and alumni have offered to help with the restoration and donate funds where needed. “We feel very sentimental about it,” he said. Still, part of the group's annual ritual is climbing atop horses for the cover of Fraternity Way magazine. What will happen to the conservator's wish to have the museum viewed from the ground instead? “I think we respect that, because more than anything we want it to last a long time.”
