Towers of London

ArtForum, Summer, 1996 by James Hall

Helen Chadwick was fascinated by even more outlandish organic processes. Mutability and decay were her overarching themes, yet her art was ebullient rather than morbid. Her most remarkable recent work, Piss Flowers, 1991-92, was featured in the Pompidou's "Feminin-Masculin: Le Sexe de L'Art." The "flowers" are white bronze casts of the cavities that Chadwick and her partner formed in snow by urinating. She described it as a unique form of lovemaking, a "metaphysical conceit for the union of two people expressing themselves bodily," yet these white efflorescences are as fluffy and dazzling as any cloud study by Constable. At 42, Chadwick, who died quite unexpectedly on March 15, had already created a mental and physical landscape all her own.

James Hall contributes regularly to Artforum.