by Valerius Claudius Iohanes on Sat Sep 25, 2004 2:40 am
Yes, I love your responses, amici.
I also find myself treasuring those bits of history and half-remembered antiquity hidden in names and other homages like the "Vesta Aparments".
I guess for me the naturalistic statuary just holds all the aces, compared to modern works. A jet of sculptured metal or a cunning blob of marble can intrigue or conjure notions, or perform the jokes or sneers that seem to compose modern artwork, but that isn't usually enough. (Maybe I'm just a 'culture consumer'.)
A realistic image is much more visceral in many ways; the gestures and frozen activity of a natural image are simply more dramatic; I think that, paradoxically, it's the naturalistic works that evoke the mythologically-receptive in us (or at least in me). Of course, that last part makes them all the more useful for propaganda purposes, I suppose. And a natural image bespeaks that continuity with the idealized naturalism of Grecian and the simple or dramatic naturalism of earlier Roman works, which waxes and wanes over the centuries.
Where are good spots and cities for finding statuary? I was in Washington DC for the first time recently and was impressed both by copies of classical statues and by all those Civil War generals in bronze, and even by the art-deco guardians of the federal Archives there. But what about other cities?
Valerius Claudius Iohannes
Curator anno MMDCCLXII
Centurio Honorarius Societatis
Civis ab MMDCCLIV
:: Adversitas bono viro intelligentiam docet. ::