Collection
Oracle
Michael Ayrton (1921-1975)
Oracle
bronze
1.52 m high
1963-4
Oracle is one of a series of works created over several years but dating back to Michael Ayrton's 1956 visit to Cumae, the earliest Greek colony in Italy, where the oracular cavern of the Sybil still exists below the Acropolis. His Oracles often have an emaciated look, taken from the myth that Demeter, godess of grain and fertility, takes the form of winter, awaiting the rebirth Persephone, her daughter, with the spring. As in his depictions of Pythia, Oracle sits on a tripod which has become part of the figure itself. She is rooted to the spot as she prophesizes the changing seasons for eternity.
Ayrton commented, 'The Minotaur evolved towards a human condition, the Oracle moved away from it towards a series of inhuman images in which her being became concentrated upon containing the prophetic voice of the god. She was to me continually and variously transformed until, irrationally, she has become identified first with the goddess Demeter, then with both Demeter and her daughter Kore, who takes the name of Persephone when she goes into the earth each winter and emerges in the spring. The Oracle exists to confirm what is already known, by prophecy. Transformed into Demeter and her daughter she confirms the changing seasons and the perpetual passage of youth into age which is what we know' (see 'work in progress 2: maze maker', Drawings and Sculpture, London, 1962).