Societas Via Romana - Discussion Archives

Valete omnes -

What of those occasional old-fashioned, realistical, classical-style, memorial statues we occasionally see in parks and public places - these are monuments and works I treasure for their very non-modern statement. I wonder, who among our various sodales also enjoy these? Do others with an interest in the ancient and classical feel the same way? When I was younger, the intellectuals I came in contact spurned such works, even as numbers of humbler folk expressed satisfaction in them. Has that changed over the last couple of decades? How do people in Europe view them (versus the way those of us in the US do)?

Salve Valere,

personally, I love them. Last year, I went to Paris and one of the things we visited was the "Arc de Triomphe".

Seeing a monument such as this one makes you think how the Roman Emprie must have looked at the height of t's power. You can only imagine the wealth of beautiful marble, temples and columns in Rome alone.

However, if you are referring to "normal" statues, such as a soldier riding a horse, I also like those. I'm not too fond of some of the more modern statues in which a blob of stone is a symbol of hope. I like the statues that just show what they are, but alo have a deeper meaning to them.

Well, that's just my opinion.

Vale bene,

Salvete

I enjoy any reminder, even if only a blob of stone given a classical name. Down the street from me are the Vesta Apartments. Nothing to look at, but the name evokes the house of the Vestales. Neptune Park has only a fountain with some aquatic motifs, no Neptune, but a pleasant little place nontheless. I have to travel up to Cleveland to find statuary remeniscent of Rome. The figures guarding at the entrance of the Superior Bridge, Neoclassical from the Depression Era, or the fifty-foot Venus de Milo in front of the Federal Bldg. She looks a little out of place. Some of the shrines to different nationalities along MLK Blvd. A number of buildings have reliefs that are little reminders, popping out unexpectedly, and always good to see.

Valete

Salvete,

Here in Flanders I have associated statues always more with the Middle Ages and later periods, than with the Roman era, although you might say that there are certain motifs and postures that have been passed down through art from Antiquity.

Valete,
Draco

Salve Draco

Maybe the statues from the dark ages, but those type of things you find in churches and cathedrales (although the first cathedrale is from the 11th or 13th century AD if not mistaken) are more of a mixture between the renaissance and antiquity. Mainly because it grew out of that kind of art and it wanted more or less turn away from it, from the art from antiquity. If you look at certain motives and postures frome arly dark ages, you will most likely see that the proportions of the figures don't match. The closer to the renaissance, the more they try to fix this problem. Than again, they did use the art of antiquity as a model for what they were trying to accomplish and maybe improve. I have real admiration for renaissance art because of its ingiunity. Today in the art world, most thigns are already done and they are constantly trying to find new things to improve art to the point where one wonders if it is still art or something else.
This is actually one of my major issues I have with modern art. The definition of art has become so illusive, so undefined, that people can spin it any way they want.
vale

Romulus

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?