Written by Ross Finocchio

During the summer of 1935, financier-philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. paid several visits to the studio of sculptor Lee Lawrie whom he had commissioned to make a colossal statue for the Fifth Avenue frontage of Rockefeller Center. When Lawrie presented his patron with a plaster model for the work, Rockefeller was sufficiently impressed that he agreed on the spot to let Lawrie and his partner on the project, Rene Chambellan, cast the figure in costly bronze, seven tons of it, instead of aluminum. A considerable expense, some might say extravagance, in the middle of the Great Depression. The result was Lawrie and Chambellan’s iconic Atlas.

Rockefeller apparently took such interest in the progress and completion of the statue that one could wonder if he saw it not only as an emblem of international commerce and comity befitting his namesake building complex, but also as a projection of self: symbol of the benevolent plutocrat carrying on his back the weight of a world in turmoil. By the time Atlas mounted its granite plinth in 1937, the city and nation had been throttled by economic hardship for several years, fascism was in full-swing in large parts of Europe, and a second global war loomed on the horizon.

I was reminded of Atlas and the circumstances of its creation when I saw Topsy Turvy, the atlas-like sculpture that ceramist Kathy Ruttenberg recently erected near the Columbia University campus, at Broadway and 117th Street, for it too emerges on the New York streetscape in a time of worldwide fear, factionalism, and fragmentation.

But Ruttenberg has confronted her commission and her cultural moment quite differently than Lawrie and Chambellan. To their classical vision of ubermasculinity bearing the cosmos on its beefy frame, she offers an elegant alternative: an introspective water-goddess. The sculpture’s variegated aquamarine surface evokes nothing so much as ocean ripples. Currents seem to swirl through her columnar body, and her hair—which forms the base, rather than the crown of the sculpture— spreads out in curling waves.

For both Atlas and Topsy Turvy, scale and context are key. Lawrie and Chambellan’s hulking titan strides well above street-level with its outstretched arms echoing the upward thrust of the skyscraper behind it and the twin spires of St. Patrick’s cathedral in front. Topsy Turvy, on the other hand, is not only earthbound but very much within reach of its audience. So much so, in fact, that Columbia students have been spotted posing for highly Instragrammable photos, hugging the sculpture’s hips with their face in the gap between her knees. From this position some may notice how the bluegreen orb above their heads, covered by a menagerie real and mythical creatures, rhymes in color and convexity with the patinated cupola of Earl Hall, the university’s center for spiritual life and community service.

Unlike Atlas whose every muscle, from foot to forehead, is tensed to meet the tremendous challenges of its day, there is no stress or strain in Topsy Turvy. Her eyes are closed, either in repose or meditation. And she is entirely nude save for a pair heels on her feet. This figure of tranquility among the sirens and screeches of the city’s oldest thoroughfare encourages us to connect with and cultivate our inner calm even in the midst of chaos. She does not bear the weight of the earth as a burden but instead she freely flows from it and into it. The effluence runs in both directions.

Indeed, a curious but crucial feature of Ruttenberg’s figure is that she lifts the globe on her feet, not her back. It is perhaps worth noting that if Topsy Turvy is turned upside down—or down-side-up, depending on your point of view—the earth supports the woman, rather the woman supporting the earth. In this case, inversion is meaning. If the future is female, as the hashtags tell us, then Ruttenberg’s figure not only heralds a new age, but flips it on its head.