"1. Statue of Unity 240 m (790 ft) (incl. 58 m (190 ft) base) 2. Spring Temple Buddha 153 m (502 ft) (incl. 25 m (82 ft) pedestal and 20 m (66 ft) throne) 3. Statue of Liberty 93 m (305 ft) (incl. 47 m (154 ft) pedestal) 4. The Motherland Calls 87 m (285 ft) (incl. 2 m (6 ft 7 in) pedestal) 5. Christ the Redeemer 38 m (125 ft) (incl. 8 m (26 ft) pedestal) 6. Michelangelo's David 5.17 m (17.0 ft) (excl. 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) plinth)"
From the Wikipedia article on the Statue of Unity, the tallest statue in the world. I got there from Wikipedia's list of tallest statues in the world, which I was reading because we're talking this morning about a 19 foot tall statue of a dog.
That dog is in Turkmenistan, and it's quite big for a dog statue — the Balto statue in NY's Central Park is closer to actual-dog size — but a statue has to be at least 98 feet tall to get on the "tallest statues" list, so the Turkmenistan dog falls way short.
Nearly all the statues on that list depict human beings (or dieties that look human). But there are a few nonhuman animals. If I read the list accurately, the tallest statue that doesn't have a human — or part-human — form is a merlion (in Singapore). No dog statues on the list.
Look how shrimpy the Statue of Liberty and Christ the Redeemer look juxaposed to the Statue of Unity and the Spring Temple Buddha. But in the real world, these statues are not near any other statues, so the sense of scale comes from the landscape (or harborscape) around them.
I haven't visited too many colossi, and I don't know if I want to. I've gazed at the Statue of Liberty thousands of times, but I didn't care about taking a boat up to the island to get close to it and experience my tininess in contrast to the thing. I did it once, to go along with others. I'm resistant to exaggerated size. Make it beautiful before you make it big. Bigness as goodness, I reject.
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You'd think a true "adherent of Mahatma Gandhi" would be humble enough that they'd detest such an ostentatious statue.
There is a statue of Hachiko outside of Shibuya Station in Tokyo. It seems to be life-size.
The dog is much revered in Japan because he represents loyalty.
The statue is a common meeting place with the only problem being, it is everyone's meeting place. Kind of tough, especially if you don't know the person you are going to meet (it happened to me).
I defy anyone to watch the movie 'Hachi: A Dog's Tale' with Richard Gere and not cry your eyes out...
I'm resistant to exaggerated size. Make it beautiful before you make it big. Bigness as goodness, I reject.
The Statue of Liberty's bigness had a purpose. Before NYC's skyline overwhelmed it, it was the inspirational symbolic welcome to millions of immigrants and travelers when arrival by ship was most common. At anything close to life size it would not have had that effect. So its bigness was essential to its goodness.
So how tall will the Barack Obama statue be?
I notice that the tallest statue with outstretched arms is less than half the size of the tallest statue. Maybe a limitation of the materials, but that should be part of the category. The Buddha and the Unity guy are just lumps that look like people.
BADuBois said...So how tall will the Barack Obama statue be?
If we make him a lump Obama, he could be forever tall, but I propose making him as tall as the oceans receded. Which is rather less.
I'm not a fan of Mount Rushmore either. Leave the mountain alone.
What was the headline when the Statue of Unity was unveiled?
"Indian Statue Of Somebody No One Has Ever Heard Of Is Tallest In The World"?
*
I dig Mt. Rushmore. If you don't like it there's always Crazy Horse. Or Stone Mountain.
"I'm resistant to exaggerated size."
There is a Meade joke in there somewhere...
"I'm not a fan of Mount Rushmore either. Leave the mountain alone."
Then you're really not going to like Stone Mountain : )
It's pretty much a KKK Disneyland...thanks, Democrats!
Unity is fine in self-selected groups, especially small ones, but tends to authoritarianism in large, heterogeneous groups.
An absurdly large statue called "Unity" might as well be called "Fascism."
MetaBallStudios has a video comparing the size of statues in 3D. Recommended:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlsHaKrOM9U
India gets the gold, China the Silver, and USA the bronze.
By dint of scale, that graphic makes Michelangelo David's penis appear really small.
Stalin was so offended by the sight of a cathedral that he could see from his Kremlin office that he had it torn down. The plan was to put up a skyscraper in its place. The skyscraper would be used as a huge base for a statue of Lenin. Iirc, the statue of Lenin would be 600 ft high. Sadly, the Great Patriotic War conflicted with these plans and the skyscraper and statue were never built. Instead, they built the world's largest swimming pool on the site. The cathedral that Stalin had torn down was originally erected to celebrate Russia's defeat of Napoleon. After the collapse of Communism, they decided to re-erect the cathedral. The plus side of constructing the world's largest outdoor swimming pool is that they're much cheaper to demolish than cathedrals and, indeed, probably give you a headstart on digging the foundation, so the whole thing wasn't a complete waste...Anyway, this can be considered a cautionary tale about the zeal to tear down the monuments of other generations and replacing them with your own..
If you like your statue, you can keep your statue... at least until the Taliban protest.
I carved a statue of Chuck on a hydrogen nucleus.
It still was too big.
The sublime and the beautiful. Per Burke, the purpose of large public buildings and momuments is to overawe the audience and inspire fear. The purpose of private statuary and memorials is to express beauty in order to inspire love.... Dogs are lovely creatures and a life size monument or even smaller would be more apt to inspire affection. A huge statue of a dog would be impressive but counterproductive and more frightening than the Pillsbury Dough Boy. The ancient Romans might have been up for such a statue though.... Huge statues of beautiful women don't inspire fear unless they have snake hair or chimerical bodies, but, even then, they're kind of cute, especially if they have bare breasts.
I loved the Statue of unity when it was in Lost.
Big gold dogs the size of small gold dogs...
Okay, help me out. The statue on the left, Unity, reminds me of a weird artist who wrote books with sinister looking characters. I remember reading them as a kid. Very dark, but creative. That statue silhouette is like one of his drawings. I can't for the life of me remember his name. Does anyone know who I'm talking about?
Medusa hair is like kyptonite for the male gaze.
Wow. Who knew? The Boon Island Light is 133 ft, tallest in New England, and a shit ton more useful.
I bet no one will be pulling down that Unity statue any time soon.
I remember now. Edward Gorey. That's what the Statue of Unity reminds me of, a Gorey silhouette.
“ The Statue of Liberty's bigness had a purpose. Before NYC's skyline overwhelmed it, it was the inspirational symbolic welcome to millions of immigrants and travelers when arrival by ship was most common.”
But that was not the purpose behind building the Statue of Liberty! You’re projecting a later idea back to the origin.
The Biden statue of unity will be even bigger.
But it will wear a mask.
A great many ancient monuments were put up to commemorate great victories. Scenes of graphic slaughter are proudly presented. Nobody wants to tear down Trajan's column and it would be considered a great crime to destroy any of the Mayan or Mesoamerican bas reliefs with their hideous scenes of torture and dismemberment. Nonetheless, a statue of a Robert E. Lee seated on a horse is considered extremely violative of good taste and decency.
It would be so cool if Trump build a new Trump tower in the middle of the rust belt and it was a 2,000 ft statue of himself. It would be much bigger than the Colossus of roads and Mt. Rushmore combined. I can see it now, a big Mac in one hand and an AR-15 in the other.
Is it the Statue of Unity or the Statue of Alfred Hitchcock?
"But that was not the purpose behind building the Statue of Liberty! You’re projecting a later idea back to the origin."
The actual purpose was that France wanted to undermine our country by manipulating us to invite as much immigration of low quality people as possible.
Yea... but can you see it with the naked eye from the space station?
"I'm resistant to exaggerated size. Make it beautiful before you make it big. Bigness as goodness, I reject."
No Italians need apply.
If I'm following along correctly, and have done the math right, you could stand the David figure on the Big Gold Dog's back... It would look like a circus act.
Call it Neopostmodern Art.
It looks to me like ol' Gurbanguly is really shitting in the eye of the 93% of the pop who are Muslim.
Narr
He's got guts, ol' Gurbanguly.
I conjecture that if I took statue 1/statue 2 and statue 2/ statue 3 ... statue n/statue n+1 with n going to infinity Height(n)/height(n+1) would converge to the golden ratio. But it is a data thing, and not theoretical.
Ann, when my wife and I visited NYC, we toured Liberty Island and Ellis Island. Up close, Lady Liberty is not only magnificant, but also delicately beautiful. Quite amazing actually. Her massive size also conveys a sense of the incomprable gift that our founders and those who followed them brought into existence here in this Land of Liberty. Interesting note, there are smaller versions of the Statue in Paris, France. One on an island in the Seine, another in the Musee D'orsay.
But that was not the purpose behind building the Statue of Liberty! You’re projecting a later idea back to the origin.
I disagree. It was always intended as a welcome to ships entering the harbor. From wiki: "Arriving at New York Harbor, Bartholdi focused on Bedloe's Island (now named Liberty Island) as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it....The statue's foundation and pedestal were aligned so that it would face southeast, greeting ships entering the harbor from the Atlantic Ocean." The Lazarus poem of course reinforces the intent.
The SoL of course stands on a classic star fort; IIRC Governor's Island was fortified, and Staten(?) Between those heavily-armed fortifications and the Battery, the harbor would be a deathtrap for any invaders or raiders who made it past the forts at the Narrows.
From high-tech defense installation to base for a big Y'ALL COME! sign; the wheel turns.
Narr
How y'all doin'?
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