Post by warrior1972 on Jul 6, 2014 5:04:25 GMT -8
(CNN) -- The birthday girl every Fourth of July is the Statue of Liberty, the image on party napkins, on parade floats and the backdrop for fireworks displays in New York Harbor. She is the ultimate American symbol, a gift from France to the United States, it is said, implying that she was a gift given government to government. The truth is, she could more correctly be called a gift from one artist to the world.
In an era when we have given up the desire to astound each other simply to please or provoke wonder, this an important distinction.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi dreamed up this colossus back in the late 1800s. A middle-tier statue maker, he took his plan to Egypt and pitched a colossal robed slave holding up a torch to stand at the mouth of the Suez Canal. When that deal failed, Bartholdi brushed off the design and brought it to America, all on his own dime. He went door to door, office to office, presenting the vision and meeting with rejection.
But with the well wishes of a few staunch supporters, he kept driving onward, winning other commissions to pay the bills and building Liberty piece by piece in Paris, paying for each section as soon as he could drum up donations. He sought out all of his engineering collaborators on his own. He dreamed up entertainments to raise monies through ticket sales.
And it was he who yanked the massive French flag from her face at her unveiling in 1886. He threw himself into the arms of a friend and wept.
www.cnn.com/2014/07/03/opinion/mitchell-statue-of-liberty/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty
In an era when we have given up the desire to astound each other simply to please or provoke wonder, this an important distinction.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi dreamed up this colossus back in the late 1800s. A middle-tier statue maker, he took his plan to Egypt and pitched a colossal robed slave holding up a torch to stand at the mouth of the Suez Canal. When that deal failed, Bartholdi brushed off the design and brought it to America, all on his own dime. He went door to door, office to office, presenting the vision and meeting with rejection.
But with the well wishes of a few staunch supporters, he kept driving onward, winning other commissions to pay the bills and building Liberty piece by piece in Paris, paying for each section as soon as he could drum up donations. He sought out all of his engineering collaborators on his own. He dreamed up entertainments to raise monies through ticket sales.
And it was he who yanked the massive French flag from her face at her unveiling in 1886. He threw himself into the arms of a friend and wept.
www.cnn.com/2014/07/03/opinion/mitchell-statue-of-liberty/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty
