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Phillip Ratner
The Warren Court, 1964
Sculptor Phillip Ratner considers his first sculptural work of any significance to be the nine portraits of the Warren Court. He made them shortly after having painted a long, panoramic portrait of the Justices on the Bench (below).
"I moved into a little house in Takoma Park [in 1964]," Ratner explained, "and had no room to set up a studio, so one day I got to playing around with clay and the first thing I did were the Warren Court heads." According to Ratner, he depicted Potter Stewart with his hands clasped together and looking upward in reference to his sole dissent in School District of Abington Township v Schempp, 374 US 203 (1963), in which the Court had found that prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. |