Saturday, September 8, 2007

OUR OWN BRONZED APHRODITE?

Artist Marc Quinn, who has already modelled a number of Kate Moss sculptures has recently enlarged one of his previous works into a 3 meter high bronze version. This yoga posed statue of the super-model will be on display this month at Chatsworth House in the UK. It would indeed be a surreal vision to see a contorted version of this iconic figure overlooking the English countryside.

Perhaps a 1000 years from now some new civilization will scour through our ruins, find this statue and think she was some sort of goddess that we worshiped. Not far from the truth really, the cult of celebrity has reached nauseating proportions. It is a form of worship for some. Quin himself did refer to Moss as the "Aphrodite of our age", so for better of worse this would seem appropriate.

Is the cocaine snorting super-model really a mirror that reflects the "spirit if our age" as exclaimed by the artist? Is she a symbolic manifestation of our own twisted, contorted version of beauty and what we all aspire towards? I wonder who else we would place in our early 21st century Parthenon? Even more compelling, what does this say about us as a society and our collective longings? I think this one is worth pondering further.

2 comments:

RC said...

very interesting thoughts....i certainly would be interested in who you would complete the parthenon with.

Westcoast Walker said...

A good challenge! A bit of a dichotomy for me to overcome with such an exercise would be to consider who I would like to be in it vs who would be in it based on our cultural idols.

Expect more on this shortly!