Robert E. Bricker

‘Manned Flight’ (or ‘Wry Awry’ or ‘Aspiration and Tragedy’) is a grand bas-relief depicting the age-old human theme of aspiration and tragedy. The composition is based on the myth of Icarus — a man who ignored his limitations, and lost everything as a consequence of his audacious hubris. 

Icarus was given a pair of wings made of wax. He was warned not to fly too close to the sun, because the wings would melt. But Icarus ignored this advice, and he fell to his death. ‘Manned Flight’ is a re-telling of the myth through self-portraiture. By casting myself as Icarus, I am demonstrating how myths are about eternal aspects of our own human nature. 

Compositionally we see Icarus at different moments in his rise and fall. Yet because we see them all at once, the antihero is trapped in an endless cycle of ascendancy and failure. This circularity is repeated in spirals and spheres seen throughout. The spheres represent ultimate knowing, enlightenment, and the eternal. The Icarus figure is trying to grab onto these things but fumbles. His homemade wings and human failings foil him, over and over. 

The artwork has many adjoining and interwoven subplots. Horus, the Egyptian Sky God, looks up at Nut – the Egyptian Goddess of the sky, through a telescope. On the other side of the composition, a microscope reminds us that what we see in the heavens is reflected on the physical plane as well. Icarus is suspended between atoms and galaxies, space and time. infinity in both directions. Myth is a way of relating the ups and downs in our life to the eternal.