Daniel O'Sullivan
Prudence Oil 60X50"
​
Prudence is about evaluating means and ends, judging methods in the light of goals. Objects traditionally associated with Prudence—the compass, square, mirror—were arranged on the bench. The mirror ended up mimicking the shape of the pieces of paper and provided a nice transition from the painting to the objects in front. The theme of the rectangles appears throughout the series. I don’t know why the stag is so often associated with Prudence, but it is. It’s certainly evocative. I chose the skull of the stag because Prudence is about considering ends, as the Latin inscription of Solon’s advice to Croesus reminds us, “Respice Finem.” The golden arrow is the only object in the series that has no physical support. It literally points up the underlying metaphor in the word intention, “to stretch the bow toward,” and the links this word has to the spiritual (immaterial) or conceptual realm of meaning and reasoning.
What are the Vices associated with Prudence? I wanted to pair the Virtues with the Seven Capital Sins, but they don’t really match up as opposites. Thinking of these seven Vices as rival principles was more helpful. Sloth, appearing on the carbon paper, could be linked to Prudence, the figure of Athena the Awakener on the tracing paper, because the latter demands that you pay attention and make choices, and the former can be thought of as a strategy for avoiding the anxiety of having to face up to things and choose.
The ancients thought of virtue as a mean between extremes as if, say, courage was a balance between timidity and recklessness. This seemed unsatisfying for my purposes. I chose to think of the opposing vices as either a deficiency, the weak case, or as a misdirection of the power marked by the virtue, the strong case. So you have the mask and cap of Folly, the weak case, and the fox’s Cunning or Guile, the strong case, with its ethic of expediency rather than moral excellence.