Full size, 23K

Plaster, 1921. Bronze cast for Vejen Art Museum, date unknown. Size 74 x 89 x 60 cm. Inv. no. 162. Plaster original donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen.

The motif

In this sculpture, Niels Hansen Jacobsen put a face on Time. It is a terrifying man's face, distorted in rage, a threatening fist lifted, surrounded by a horrible storm. Time's long hair is blown about, and around him wells a serpentine ornament that brings to mind storm clouds or turbulent waves. The sculpture has a decorative look, with the twisting Art Nouveau style ornament that brings to mind the figures from the 1890s.

Contemporary interpretations

Folkebladet wrote on January 4, 1922:

The sculptor Hansen Jacobsen, Vejen, has completed a new work of art, "The Face of Our Time," which is intended to symbolize our age's perplexity, despair, and impotent use of force.

Time and death

Niels Hansen Jacobsen's sculpture might have been inspired by the horrors of the First World War. It can also be interpreted as a metaphor of Time as a general concept. Viewed in this way, the sculpture conveys an existential message. Time and death are often associated: death holds an hourglass, in which life's hours run out like the sand.