The legacy game: Gormley isn't the first artist to worry about his place in history

The sculptor Antony Gormley has voiced doubts about his ‘usefulness to the human race’. But to be an artist, you need a big ego

Antony Gormley has been struck down by modesty. The artist who casts his own body religiously, and whose monumental works include not only the Angel of the North but a hotel room whose exterior is shaped like a squatting Lego figure, has been musing about his own place in history.

“It’s quite possible that my whole project is very flawed,” he speculates. “That, in the great frame of things, when contributions are weighed in the balance of usefulness to the human race, I may be found very wanting, but it’s too late for doubt now. Neither is there time for it.”

Continue reading...