Strange Statues & Sculptures

This illusion installation is part of the "Forever Is Now" exhibition now on display on the Giza Plateau.

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First-of-Its-Kind Art Installation Appears to Levitate the Tip of a Giza Pyramid

The landscape of Egypt’s Giza Plateau and its famed pyramids has changed dramatically over the millennia. When it was first built around 2600 B.C.E., the Great Pyramid featured a gleaming gold cap on its peak, and its sides shone bright white thanks to a finish of polished limestone. The Great Sphinx, meanwhile, might have originally depicted an ordinary lion rather than a mythical creature.

More than 4,500 years after their creation, the pyramids have lost their sheen, and the reclining sphinx’s head has long since been chiseled into its current human form. The changes don’t stop there. As Aimee Dawson writes for the Art Newspaper, contemporary artists continue to reinterpret the historic site with enormous, site-specific installations, including French artist JR’s Greetings From Giza, which seemingly levitates the top of Giza’s second-largest pyramid.

JR’s illusion is one of ten works highlighted in “Forever Is Now,” a first-of-its-kind exhibition that debuted on the Giza Plateau last week and will remain on view through November 7. A private Egyptian art firm, Art D’Éypte, organized the show in collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Unesco ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/giza-art-pyramids-sphinx-ancient-egypt-JR-180978931/
 
Trevp666 said:
I think the only thing that is going to motivate is nightmares in children.
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If I'd shown my kids that, and when they were young I'd certainly have done so if I could, I'd have explained to them what it was about. That's what art is for.
 
Guess where I was earlier today.

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It's getting on for two decades since I saw it last, but it's still a tremendous piece of work. I hadn't known that the figure is pinned through the foundations and bedrock into the actual underlying coal seams, which adds, well, another layer to the symbolism.

But the thing that reduced me to tears was the tributes and mementoes to lost loved ones that people had placed in the trees nearby. Maybe recent events in my own life* made me much more receptive to the notion, but it was a new development since I was last there, and the - presumably - spontaneous original impulse to seek the protection of the Angel is very moving. And eminently on-topic for this message board, I believe.

* There has been additional minor strangeness to the day's proceedings, which I may mention elsewhere if only I can find a suitable thread.
 
Krepostnoi said:
Guess where I was earlier today.

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It's getting on for two decades since I saw it last, but it's still a tremendous piece of work. I hadn't known that the figure is pinned through the foundations and bedrock into the actual underlying coal seams, which adds, well, another layer to the symbolism.

But the thing that reduced me to tears was the tributes and mementoes to lost loved ones that people had placed in the trees nearby. Maybe recent events in my own life* made me much more receptive to the notion, but it was a new development since I was last there, and the - presumably - spontaneous original impulse to seek the protection of the Angel is very moving. And eminently on-topic for this message board, I believe.

* There has been additional minor strangeness to the day's proceedings, which I may mention elsewhere if only I can find a suitable thread.
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When the angel was taken by road to Gateshead the roads were lined with people watching it travel. It was like a religious procession, so it seems to have maintained that aura. Part of it is the scale, it is epic.
 
A statue commemorating a Dallas (Texas) historical figure - depicted with an octopus' head - mysteriously appeared in a prominent downtown location. And not for the first time ...
A mysterious cephalopod-headed statue appeared in Downtown Dallas park where Confederate War Memorial once stood

It's the second of these bizarre statues to pop up in the city. The first, which claimed Dallas' founding father was part cephalopod, appeared in 2019. ...

A mysterious statue claiming to portray 1800s Dallas pioneer Sarah Horton Cockrell was placed in Pioneer Park Cemetery near the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center at around 10:30 a.m. on Monday. (Convention center security guards themselves discovered the guerilla installation later in the day, but were able to pinpoint its arrival after reviewing camera footage of the park.)

The statue was placed on the same concrete slab that once sat beneath the 65-foot-tall Confederate War Memorial that the city removed from the park in June 2020.

A plaque, which accompanied the new statue, claimed that it was the work of an anonymous Dallas artist named Solomon, and a donation to the City of Dallas by the late local oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens. ...

A notable Dallas historical figure worthy of her own distinction, Cockrell -- depicted in the statue with the body of a human female and the head of an octopus -- was born in Virginia in 1819 and moved to Dallas with her family in 1844. Known as "Dallas' first capitalist," she was involved in numerous economic and technological advances in the city ...

The Cockrell statue's plaque included a few additional features -- including a misspelling of Dallas as "D'llas" beneath the city logo in its bottom corner, and a series of Cistercian monk numerals representing a Google Voice phone number that plays a cryptic and vague recording when dialed. ...

In October of 2019, a similar statue -- also apparently made by the same Solomon artist -- was mysteriously installed along a stretch of road beneath the convention center. That piece, which was removed almost as quickly as it appeared, claimed that City of Dallas founder John Neely Bryan was part cephalopod. ...

The 2019 statue depicting Bryan boasted a similarly worded (and often misspelled) plaque about his life, and also claimed Dallas was a "shared delusion." ...

As for who was behind placing the statue in the park? The security guards said they aren't sure. ...
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FULL STORY (With Video & Photos): https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/l...omon/287-5de07db5-98d2-4575-adc4-fbdb78980166
 
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THAT'S MY LOCAL STATUE!!!!!!!!

I thought it might be from your description @Herr Cloaca but it really is!

It is about the shift over time from industry to a greener more diverse economy. The artist, have blanked the name unfortunately, worked with a couple of local schools and a grand time was had by all. The strips inside the wheels are fountain nozzles, and rubbing-a-hedgehog for luck has become a local pastime :) Originally the square concrete area was edged by tiles made and designed by the school children. Those have all gone now though, I think the artists may have claimed them ;)

It's a weird thing, but if anyone furth of the area says it we'll batter them! (and then deep-fry them along with the mars bars)

Am made up to see it on here!

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Cistercian monk numerals
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do they mean roman numerals?

edit to add: or maybe some sort of mediaeval scribe manuscript notation?
 
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Mythopoeika said:
Link doesn't work for me. Access denied.
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Try again. The TV station website seems to have moved the news article (and changed the URL) since I posted the story here.

I've updated the URL in my earlier post.
 
Frideswide said:
do they mean roman numerals?

edit to add: or maybe some sort of mediaeval scribe manuscript notation?
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Here's the plaque that was installed with the mystery statue.

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The numerals are the glyphs at the bottom center on the plaque. They're a medieval monastic invention that was superseded by Arabic numerals.
The medieval Cistercian numerals, or "ciphers" in nineteenth-century parlance, were developed by the Cistercian monastic order in the early thirteenth century at about the time that Arabic numerals were introduced to northwestern Europe. They are more compact than Arabic or Roman numerals, with a single glyph able to indicate any integer from 1 to 9,999.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercian_numerals
 
EnolaGaia said:
They're a medieval monastic invention that was superseded by Arabic numerals.
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Excellent! Never heard of them but am pleased that my idea was the right one :)
 
EnolaGaia said:
Try again. The TV station website seems to have moved the news article (and changed the URL) since I posted the story here.

I've updated the URL in my earlier post.
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Still not working. The whole domain is denied to anybody outside the US, it seems.
 
There is a statue of a 'Tripod' in Woking.
This is because in the original "War of the Worlds" novel, the first of the invaders from Mars lands on a common nearby.
(I dunno who the bloke in the picture is)
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Dinobot said:
Uh, the one with the whipped cream, or the one with the H.P Lovecraft impersonation?
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Neither, it was after the cream job but before the H.P. sauciness.
You remember.....the incident at the local pond, with the papier-mâché Cthulhu and the Halloween costume.
 
Very sad news for potato fans:
News story (with photos)

The Spunta potato statue in Cyprus has been cut down in its prime, presumably by vandals. Apparently it was not popular with the locals (because of what it looks like?), so... lot of suspects.
 
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