by Giancarlo Biagi
METAPHORS
Just as the finest music or poetry enhances our lives, enters our minds and our homes, so does sculpture. It becomes a symbol, an icon. In our everyday lives, we respond to songs, clothing, films, automobiles, and also to sculpture. We identify with these objects or opuses - they define us by our response to them.
The success of the great masters lies in simplicity, elegance, and the ability to ponder one's own culture with the other mundane interlocutors. The David, a symbol of courage in confronting the giant, is a theme taken from the Bible but transformed in the fifteenth century by Michelangelo to embody the emerging Florentine spirit. In recent times, one symbol that is known worldwide is the Statue of Liberty, which conveys a message of freedom so powerful, so ubiquitous, it is used to represent struggle against repression everywhere, such as during the Chinese student revolt in Tiananmen Square. This gowned figure of a woman holding a tablet and brandishing a flaming torch toward the sky represents, precisely, Liberty Enlightening the World, a symbol of opportunity and freedom, as is beautifully written in the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, a portion of which is inscribed on the statue's pedestal:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp"cries she
With silent lips.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door"
The simpler and more straightforward the metaphor, the greater the number of people who will identify with it. The deeper, more complex the metaphor becomes, the more cultured the viewer must be in order to decipher the hidden meaning, in my point of view. Giancarlo Biagi
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Sculpture Review Magazine
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Liberty Enlightening the World
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Current issue: Summer 2003