James Lee Byars: The Perfect Kiss
(c)image: M HKA
The Tomb of James Lee Byars, 1986
Object
, 100 x 100 x 100 cm
globe consisted of lime sand brick
"Well, I like beauty. I mean I do not have Plato’s definition before me now, but the sphere was one of the things he used in talking about it. If you have an interest and time, if you look into Plato you will see this magnificent definition of the beauty of the sphere where all points are equidistant in the mathematics of the sphere. The surface is smooth and the surface is polished. He holds this up as one of the great examples of beauty and then goes through the cosmological idea of the earth and the religious interpretation. I am very susceptible to such ideas of beauty."
Source: interview by Wolf-Günter Thiel on 6 March 1995.