I have to admit that when I travel, I take a lot of photos of statues. A few of my most favourite statues that I got up close and personal with and took photos were Neptune in Bologna, Italy and The Thinker in Paris, France. There has yet to be a country and/or city that I have visited that hasn’t had a number of statues to be admired. I am sure you have likely noticed the same thing,
You may have also noticed that so many of those statues had nude subjects – gods and goddesses seem to be the number one choice. However, more and more modern statues with nude subjects are about ordinary people though not any particular person. In my yard, I have two Buddhas – not nudes though both have little in the way of clothing as they meditate in the garden. I would like to put in a few classical nude statues, but in truth there is little room in my small yard.
Other statues usually depict a man who is important in historical terms. You can’t rewrite history, but what we put up as statues tells others more about us and our beliefs and value system than it does about history. An example: a statue of Hitler or any other historical person who is more infamous than famous. By putting up such a statue, we give honour to that personage.
By taking it down, we aren’t cancelling history or culture, we are choosing not to celebrate it. If one is creating a walk that has every president of the USA in bronze, then it is important to include all of the past presidents. But that aside, there isn’t any person past or present that I want in my garden. I am all about ideas such as children or an old man and woman.
That said, it would be kind of neat to have oneself as a statue. The real problem would be to choose which version of oneself that one would have carved in stone or cast in bronze. For myself, I’d rather not deal with that thought at all. I’d rather play it safe and have a statue that has a message rather than honour a particular person. And of course, I’d want the statue to have a nude body that was less perfect – a slight paunch for both male and female, wrinkles and or scars, faces that aren’t perfectly symmetrical – the anyman-anywoman.
Would you put a statue in your yard or home? If there was no objection from another person, especially a significant other, nor a matter of cost, what if any statue would you commission?