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SALUTES: October
Many sculptures in Manhattan are linked to important dates in U.S. or world history. Here are a few for October.
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October 25, 1858: William Seward on the "irrepressible conflict" between the North and South
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Late October 2005: Theodore Roosevelt's Review of the 1913 Armory Show
October 12, 1492: Columbus makes landfall in the Caribbean
Columbus Monument, Columbus Circle, intersection of Eighth Avenue, Central Park South and 59th Street. The entrances to the island on which the Monument sits are at the southwest and northwest sides of the Circle, by the new AOL building. Columbus faces south, and would be easily visible at any time of day if he were not so high: take binoculars.
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: "Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Adm'r'l, speak; what shall I say?"
"Why say: 'Sail on! sail on! and on!'" ...
From "Columbus," by Joaquin Miller (read the whole poem)
Columbus's unique and glorious achievement is that he conceived the idea
of sailing west in order to reach the Far East, that he had the courage
and perseverance to organize and carry out such a voyage, and that he
discovered the Americas at the end of it. The efficient, predictable sea
routes he established on his four voyages made permanent settlement in the Americas feasible.
For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan and Forgotten Delights: The Producers.
October
14, 1094: Battle of Cuarte or Poblet
El Cid Campeador, Hispanic Society of America courtyard, off Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets. Faces south, and stands in full sunlight all day. Visitors are not allowed to enter the lower level of the courtyard, but the view of the Cid from the upper level is terrific. (It's only the four smaller sculptures around the Cid that are difficult to see.)
At the Battle of Cuarte or Poblet (near Valencia, Spain), the seemingly invincible Almoravids suffered their first major defeat, by smaller force led by El Cid Campeador, Rodrigo Díaz. This was an important step in the reconquest of Spain from the Moors during the Middle Ages. The works of Aristotle, whose philosophical influence brought Europe out of the Middle Ages, were brought back to Europe by the interaction of Christian and Arab scholars in Spain.
El Cid became one of the national heroes of Spain and the subject of many works of literature, including Corneille's Le Cid.
For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.
October 17, 1899: “My country, right or wrong.”
Carl Schurz Monument, Upper Morningside Drive and 116th
Street, high on a hill with a terrific view to the east. The statue itself
faces west, and is best seen in the afternoon when the sun's on its face.
On this date Carl Schurz (Civil War general, U.S. senator, Secretary of the Interior under Rutherford B. Hayes) made a speech opposing American actions in the Spanish-American War, especially in the Philippines. One line of it is famous: "My country, right or wrong." In context, the comment is much more thought-provoking:
I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves too clear-headed not to appreciate the vital difference between the expansion of the republic and its free institutions over contiguous territory and kindred populations, which we all gladly welcome if accomplished peaceably and honorably -- and imperialism which reaches out for distant lands to be ruled as subject provinces; too intelligent not to perceive that our very first step on the road of imperialism has been a betrayal of the fundamental principles of democracy, followed by disaster and disgrace; too enlightened not to understand that a monarchy may do such things and still remain a strong monarchy, while a democracy cannot do them and still remain a democracy; too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions, or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions, and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right." (The very end of a long speech, http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ailtexts/schurz_f.html ; beginning of the speech is at http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/ailtexts/schurz.html )
For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.
October 19, 1864: Battle of Cedar Creek
General Philip Henry Sheridan, Christopher St. Park,
adjoining Sheridan Square (just east of Seventh Ave. and north of West 4th
St.). Faces west.
Up from the South at
break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble, and rumble, and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan twenty miles away.
And wider still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar;
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold,
As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
With Sheridan twenty miles away.
But there is a road from Winchester town,
A good, broad highway leading down;
And there, through the flush of the morning light,
A steed as black as the steeds of night
Was seen to pass, as with eagle flight;
As if he knew the terrible need,
He stretched away with his utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell; but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.
Still sprung from those swift hoofs, thundering South,
The dust, like smoke from the cannon's mouth;
Or the trail of a comet, sweeping faster and faster.
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster,
The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battlefield calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play,
With Sheridan only ten miles away.
Under his spurning feet the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,
And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind,
And the steed, like a barque fed with furnace ire,
Swept on, with his wild eye full of fire.
But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire;
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.
The first that the general saw were the groups
Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;
What was done? What to do? A glance told him both,
Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,
He dashed down the line 'mid a storm of huzzas,
And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because
The sight of the master compelled it to pause.
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;
By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril's play,
He seemed to the whole great army to say,
"I have brought you Sheridan all the way
From Winchester down to save the day!"
Hurrah! Hurrah for Sheridan!
Hurrah! Hurrah for horse and man!
And when their statues are placed on high,
Under the dome of the Union sky,
The American soldier's Temple of Fame;
There with the glorious general's name,
Be it said, in letters both bold and bright,
"Here is the steed that saved the day,
By carrying Sheridan into the fight,
From Winchester, twenty miles away!"
"Sheridan's Ride," by Thomas Buchanan Read (1822–1872)
General Sheridan, summoned to Washington for a conference, returned to Western Virginia to learn that his troops had been attacked and were fleeing in disarray from their camp at Cedar Creek. After a hard ride from Winchester he rallied his troops and snatched a victory that ended the Shenandoah Valley campaign. In this one-day battle, over 50,000 men fought and about 8,500 died. (The sheer numbers involved in Civil War battles always stun me.)
Sheridan's account of the battle appears in T.J. Stiles, ed., In Their Own Words: Civil War Commanders, pp. 298-310.
October 1871: Opening of Grand Central Depot
Cornelius Vanderbilt, south facade of Grand Central Terminal, at the level of the Park Avenue viaduct. Pedestrians can enter the Hyatt Hotel (42nd Street just east of Grand Central), go up the stairs on the left to the reception level, go up the escalator to the left of Concierge's desk, then go through the revolving doors (ahead and to your right as you come off the escalator) to the sidewalk by the Park Avenue viaduct. Turn left on the sidewalk (toward 42nd Street), and follow the sidewalk around to the south side of Grand Central. The sidewalk ends almost across from the Vanderbilt statue. The statue faces south, and is best viewed on a cloudy day, when the shadows are not too harsh.
Grand Central Depot was one of the largest enclosed spaces in the world when completed in 1871. Within a few years, it became too small for its volume of traffic, and was soon replaced by Grand Central Terminal. Cornelius Vanderbilt was largely responsible for the Depot and for the expansion and improvement of New York's railroad system during the late 19th century. His statue, once at the center of a pediment filled with details of his accomplishments in the rail and steamship industries, now stands at the south facade of the Terminal.
Forgotten Delights: The Producers includes a lengthy essay on Vanderbilt. See also Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.
October: Memorializing American Troops
Fame, by Frederick MacMonnies, 1895. Battle
Monument, East of Trophy Point, campus of the United States Military
Academy, West Point, N.Y.
107th Infantry Monument, by Karl Ilava, 1927. Central Park, Fifth Ave. at 67th St.
On a recent visit to the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., I was struck by the difference between a war memorial I saw there and Ilava's 107th Infantry Memorial.
West Point has MacMonnies’ Fame, a woman in
billowing drapery. She balances on a 46-foot-tall column atop the Battle
Monument, which honors soldiers of the regular army who died during the
Civil War. Her triumphant pose and her very name - “Fame” or "Victory" -
celebrate the fact that those soldiers died fighting for a worthwhile
cause. The names of the officers honored are on the column; the names of
the enlisted men are on supports around the base.
Worlds away from Fame, although it was
created barely 30 years later, is Karl Ilava’s 107th
Infantry Monument. Here we see seven men with very similar faces and
builds; the effect of the similarity is to make them all rather anonymous.
Three of them charge forward, weapons at the ready, one of them shouting.
The other four are either wounded or tending wounded comrades. From their
gear, these are clearly foot soldiers - grunts - the lowest rank of the
army. They’re not thinking about the long-term goals of this war. They’re
not celebrating a victory. They’re simply following orders in the heat of
battle, which is what grunts are supposed to do. Because the three central
figures are charging forward, the emphasis is on headlong action. It’s
actually quite an achievement to be able to show that persuasively. The
disturbing feature, though, is that more soldiers are suffering and dying
than living and fighting.
In a work of art, the moment that an artist chooses to show is crucial. If, in a battle, he shows the wounded and dying as well as those fighting, and besides that doesn’t show the reason for the fighting or the outcome, the message is: “Fighting is brutal and futile.” Or more succinctly, “War is hell.”
Karl Ilava served with the 107th
Infantry, and after living through the horrors of World War I (mustard
gas, tanks, trench warfare, rampant disease), I can understand that he
might see only the negative side of war. What I find less comprehensible
is why a statue with such a negative message was erected for posterity in
Central Park.
MacMonnies's other works include the Nathan Hale at City Hall Park and the chariot group and 2 high reliefs on the triumphal arch at Grand Army Plaza, the main entrance to Brooklyn's Prospect Park. In the original model of Fame (a small-scale version of which is on display in the West Point Museum), the woman was alighting on top of the column, balanced on one foot. MacMonnies changed the pose at the request of officials at the academy, who feared the sculpture "would fire up the young cadets too much." On MacMonnies' life and works, see Dianne Durante's lecture " Turn-of-the-Century Artist-Entrepreneurs: Saint Gaudens, MacMonnies, and Parrish," available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore, www.AynRandBookstore.com .
While visitors are not allowed to wander the grounds of West Point unescorted, bus tours are regularly scheduled and a museum offers a wide selection of uniforms and weapons. The views of the Hudson River from the USMA’s grounds are particularly gorgeous when the leaves are changing colors. And, of course, there’s the great pleasure of spending a whole day at a place where you never see a sign, “No blood for oil,” or “Bring our troops home.” It does exasperate me that of the dozen or so sculptures on the grounds, I could only get good photographs of two. But I’ll concede that the security of the USMA should take precedence over the satisfaction of cranky art historians. West Point's URL is http://www.usma.edu/visiting.asp .
October 25, 1858: William Seward on the "irrepressible conflict" between the North and South
William H. Seward, by Randolph
Rogers, 1876. Southwest corner of Madison Square, at 23rd St. and Fifth
Ave.
In the late 1850s Seward (1801-1872) stood an excellent chance of being nominated for president. In 1858, in his most famous speech, this fervent Abolitionist explained why decades of attempts at compromise between slavery and freedom had failed and must continue to fail. I'm uploading substantial excerpts from the "irrepressible conflict" speech because, despite some errors of knowledge and logic, it's a principled, rational, well-thought-out speech of the sort we never hear from our 21st-century politicians.
Delegates to the Republican National Convention in 1860 gave Seward the most votes on the first ballot, but not enough to win the presidential nomination. Lincoln was eventually nominated in hopes he would win in the key states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois. Seward's efforts on behalf of Lincoln and his political expertise were rewarded with the position of Secretary of State, which he held from 1861-1869. During his tenure he purchased the Alaska territory ("Seward's Folly") from Russia. If you're more in the mood for poetry than political thought today, read Robert W. Service's "Spell of the Yukon," at http://www.robertwservice.com/modules/library/article.php?articleid=16 .
Seward was the first New Yorker to be honored with a monument in the city. It's not an exciting piece, and there were unfounded rumors that the artist had merely grafted Seward's head on the same body he'd used for a statue of Lincoln in Philadelphia's Fairmont Park. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a photo of Lincoln on the Net, or I'd put it up so you could exercise your skills at precise observation. (SEE ADDENDA.) Among those who contributed to the cost of Seward's statue were Cornelius Vanderbilt. Among those who attended its dedication were future President Chester A. Arthur, whose statue stands at the north end of Madison Square Park, and future Democratic presidential nominee General Winfield S. Hancock, whose bust stands where Manhattan Avenue and St. Nicholas Avenue meet at 124th Street.
ADDENDA: Thanks to Quent Cordair at the Cordair Gallery, who provided the following 2 links to photos of the Philadelphia Lincoln. Even looking at these rather small images, you should be able to find half a dozen ways the bodies differ.
Late October
2005: Theodore Roosevelt's Review of the 1913
Armory Show
Theodore Roosevelt, by James Earle Fraser, 1940. American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 80th St.
Although in many ways Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt is the epitome of a blustery macho man, he was interested in art as well. During his presidency he invited Augustus Saint Gaudens, Charles McKim and John Quincy Adams Ward to advise him on art. In 1905 he even invited Saint Gaudens to help redesign American coinage, which Roosevelt derided as being in a state of "artistically atrocious hideousness." (More on that in my forthcoming book, Manhattan's Outdoor Sculpture: A Guide.)
Soon after his second term as president ended, Roosevelt wrote a short review of the Armory Show, one of the most influential art exhibitions ever held in the United States. Bear in mind that Roosevelt grew up in the late nineteenth century, when New Yorkers saw some of the best sculpture Americans ever produced erected in their city by such accomplished artists as Saint Gaudens, Ward and Daniel Chester French. Roosevelt disparaged many works at the Armory Show that he considered "extremist/" His essay is a useful reminder that not all new art is good art, even when the critics rave about it.
Roosevelt's essay on the Armory Show isn't available elsewhere on the Internet as I write this, so I've included the whole essay, with occasional links to artists and works he mentions specifically.
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"An Art Exhibition," by Theodore Roosevelt. From History as Literature and Other Essays (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), pp. 303-310.
The recent "International Exhibition of Modern Art" in New York was really noteworthy. Mssrs. Davies, Kuhn, Gregg, and their fellow members of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors did a work of very real value in securing such an exhibition of the works of both foreign and native painters and sculptors. Primarily their purpose was to give the public a chance to see what has recently been going on abroad. No similar collection of the works of European "moderns" has ever been exhibited in this country. The exhibitors were quite right as to the need of showing to our people in this manner the art forces which of late have been at work in Europe, forces which can not be ignored.
This does not mean that I in the least accept the view that these men take of the European extremists whose pictures were here exhibited. It is true, as the champions of these extremists say, that there can be no life without change, no development without change, and that to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life. It is no less true, however, that change may mean death and not life, and retrogression instead of development. Probably we err in treating most of these pictures seriously. It is likely that many of them represent in the painters the astute appreciation of the power to make folly lucrative which the late P.T. Barnum showed with his faked mermaid. There are thousands of people who will pay small sums to look at a faked mermaid; and now and then one of this kind with enough money will buy a Cubist picture, or a picture of a misshapen nude woman, repellent from every standpoint.
In some ways it is the work of the American painters and sculptors which is of most interest in this collection, and a glance at this work must convince any one of the real good that is coming out of the new movements, fantastic though many of the developments of these new movements are. There was one note entirely absent from the exhibition, and that was the note of the commonplace. There was not a touch of simpering, self-satisfied conventionality anywhere in the exhibition. Any sculptor or painter who had in him something to express and the power of expressing it found the field open to him. He did not have to be afraid because his work was not along ordinary lines. There was no stunting or dwarfing, no requirement that a man whose gift lay in new directions should measure up or down to stereotyped an fossilized standards.
For all of this there can be only hearty praise. But this does not in the least mean that the extremists whose paintings and pictures were represented are entitled to any praise, save, perhaps, that they have helped to break fetters. Probably in any reform movement, any progressive movement, in any field of life, the penalty for avoiding the commonplace is a liability to extravagance. It is vitally necessary to move forward and to shake off the dead hand, often the fossilized dead hand, of the reactionaries; and yet we have to face the fact that there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement. In this recent art exhibition the lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and the Futurists, or Near-Impressionists. I am not entirely certain which of the two latter terms should be used in connection with some of the various pictures and representations of plastic art - and, frankly, it is not of the least consequence. The Cubists are entitled to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored puzzle-pictures of the Sunday newspapers. Of course there is no reason for choosing the cube as a symbol, except that it is probably less fitted than any other mathematical expression for any but the most formal decorative art. There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isoceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another. Take the picture which for some reason is called "A Naked Man Going Down Stairs" [i.e., Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase]. There is in my bathroom a really good Navajo rug which, on any proper interpretation of Cubist theory, is a far more satisfactory and decorative picture. Now, if, for some inscrutable reason, it suited somebody to call this rug a picture of, say, "A Well-Dressed Man Going Up a Ladder," the name would fit the facts just about as well as in the case of the Cubist picture of the "Naked Man Going Down Stairs." From the standpoint of terminology each name would have whatever merit inheres in a rather cheap straining after effect; and from the standpoint of decorative value, of sincerity, and of artistic merit, the Navajo rug is infinitely ahead of the picture.
As for many of the human figures in the pictures of the Futurists, they show that the school would be better entitled to the name of the "Past-ists." I was interested to find that a man of scientific attainments who had likewise looked at the pictures had been struck, as I was, by their resemblance to the later work of the palaeolithic artists of the French and Spanish caves [such as Altamira and Lascaux]. There are interesting samples of the strivings for the representation of the human form among artists of many different countries and times, all in the same stage of palaeolithic culture, to be found in a recent number of the "Revue d'Ethnographie." The palaeolithic artist was able to portray the bison, the mammoth, the reindeer, and the horse with spirit and success, while he still stumbled painfully in the effort to portray man. This stumbling effort in his case represented progress, and he was entitled to great credit for it. Forty thousand years later, when entered into artificially and deliberately, it represents only a smirking pose of retrogression, and is not praiseworthy. So with much of the sculpture. A family group of precisely the merit that inheres in a structure made of the wooden blocks in a nursery is not entitled to be reproduced in marble. Admirers speak of the kneeling female figure by [Wilhelm] Lehmbruck - I use "female" advisedly, for although obviously mammalian it is not especially human - as "full of lyric grace," as "tremendously sincere," and "of a jewel-like preciousness." I am not competent to say whether these words themselves represent sincerity or merely a conventional jargon; it is just as easy to be conventional about the fantastic as about the commonplace. In any event one might as well speak of the "lyric grace" of a praying mantis, which adopts much the same attitude; and why a deformed pelvis should be called "sincere," or a tibia of giraffe-like length "precious," seems to a reasonably sane view of the pictures of Matisse a question of pathological rather than artistic significance. This figure and the absurd portrait head of some young lady have the merit that inheres in extravagant caricature. It is a merit, but it is not a high merit. It entitles these pieces to stand in sc where nonsense rhymes stand in literature and the sketches of Aubrey Beardsley in pictorial art. These modern sculptured caricatures in no way approach the gargoyles of Gothic cathedrals, probably because the modern artists are too self-conscious and make themselves ridiculous by pretentiousness. The makers of the gargoyles knew very well that the gargoyles did not represent what was most important in the Gothic cathedrals. They stood for just a little point of grotesque reaction against, and relief from, the tremendous elemental vastness and grandeur of the Houses of God. They were imps, sinister and comic, grim and yet futile, and they fitted admirably into the framework of the theology that found its expression in the towering and wonderful piles which they ornamented.
Very little of the work of the extremists among the European "moderns" seems to be good in and for itself; nevertheless it has certainly helped any number of American artists to do work that is original and serious; and this not only in painting but in sculpture. I wish the exhibition had contained some of the work of the late Marcius Symonds; very few people knew or cared for it while he lived [or now, either: his works aren't on the Net]; but not since [J.M.W.] Turner has there been another man on whose canvas glowed so much of that unearthly "light that never was on land or sea." But the exhibition contained so much of extraordinary merit that it is ungrateful even to mention an omission. To name the pictures one would like to possess - and the bronzes and tanagras [terracotta figurines] and plasters - would mean to make a catalogue of indefinite length. One of the most striking pictures was the "Terminal Yards" [by Leon Kroll] - the seeing eye was there, and the cunning hand. I should like to mention all the pictures of the president of the association, Arthur B. Davies [sample of Davies' work]. As first-class decorative work of an entirely new type, the very unexpected pictures of Sheriff Bob Chandler [another artist not on the Net] have a merit all their own. The "Arizona Desert," the "Canadian Night," the group of girls on the roof a New York tenement-house, the studies in the Bronx Zoo, the "Heracles," the studies of the Utah monument, the little group called "Gossip," which has something of the quality of the famous fifteenth idyl of Theocritus, the "Pelf," with its grim suggestiveness - these and a hundred others are worthy of study, each of them; I am naming at random those which at the moment I happen to recall. I am not speaking of the acknowledged masters, of Whistler, Puvis de Chavannes, Monet; nor of John's children [Gwen John, 1876-1939, or her brother Augustus John, 1878-1961]; nor of Cezanne's old woman with a rosary; nor of [Odilon] Redon's marvellous color-pieces - a worthy critic should speak of these. All I am trying to do is to point out why a layman is grateful to those who arranged this exhibition.
For more on this sculpture, see Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan.
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