Lyndon Hood - art appreciator, Wellington
Monday, July 16, 2007
I've been reading a book about the use of the female form as symbol (I liked Marina Warner's other books about mythology as you can see from this) which raises, at the same time a dismissing, an intriguing idea. The Liberty depicted in the famous statue, gifted to the US by France, is a much more staid and less revolutionary creature than the ones France was producing some hundred fifty (oops) years earlier.
What might the US of A be like today if instead of a sun-crown their national statue wore a Phrygian cap, one of those floppy-topped conical affairs widely symbolic of revolution (not least upon the heads of the Mariannes who symbolise the French one) and, at its reddest, made famous by Papa Smurf?
What if instead of a torch she was brandishing an enormous and symbolic faggot?
And, most significantly, what if, like more than one Marianne, she had (indicating her revolutionary zeal) failed to notice that her boobies had slipped out of her top?
I mean, quite apart from the wardrobe malfunction thing.
Oh, and, talk about being endowed with meaning.
New Hood: Youth Parliament Broken Up by Police
What might the US of A be like today if instead of a sun-crown their national statue wore a Phrygian cap, one of those floppy-topped conical affairs widely symbolic of revolution (not least upon the heads of the Mariannes who symbolise the French one) and, at its reddest, made famous by Papa Smurf?
What if instead of a torch she was brandishing an enormous and symbolic faggot?
And, most significantly, what if, like more than one Marianne, she had (indicating her revolutionary zeal) failed to notice that her boobies had slipped out of her top?
I mean, quite apart from the wardrobe malfunction thing.
Oh, and, talk about being endowed with meaning.
New Hood: Youth Parliament Broken Up by Police
Labels: art, breasts, satire, symbolism, united states
