Even though it’s not the original statue that once topped Madison Square Garden, this Diana featured in the Met is still so stunning. She’s a smoldering gold color, sunnily bright but darker at the seams of her body than anywhere else. Her dark golden hair is loosely pulled back in a bun that’s expertly placed on the back top of her head, right where you’d think an up-do should be. She looks like someone’s vision of perfection, a tall golden goddess whose femininity gives her grace and a perfect body, but she can still shoot an arrow with a professional’s form. But even after all of this, it’s her posture that grabs me. Her right leg is arabesqued behind her with her little golden nugget toes slightly gaping, and her left foot is lifted so that all her weight is perfectly balanced on the ball of that foot. It just looks effortless. Like she and the bow and arrow she’s aiming weigh nothing and are just being carried along by the wind. She belongs on the top of a building.
A black mass, like an upturned hand, it has all sorts of whimsical appendages serving as its fingers. And every inch of this creature is covered in letters, numbers, symbols, and designs, that rise up out of it’s black, almost moist looking surface. From where I sit I can see English, Greek, and possibly Arabic. And resemblances of a flipper, claw, leg, tentacle, and more wrap around one another as if they were protecting something that lay in it’s center.
It seems as if it’s supposed to be some sort of multicultural, multilingual, multi-everything monster– what would happen if every creature, language, and idea were forced into one, self-destructive being.
Jean Baptiste Pigalle L’amour embrassant L’Amitié (according to GoogleTranslate: “Love kissing Friendship”)
Covered in a layer of age, a young mother embraces her angel child with a soft, careful expression on her face. Her loose dress spills around her and her delicate life-like hands hold the winged baby who stands to her left- up on a log so he can get even closer to her. She’s sitting on the remains of a tree and a wreath of flowers, logs, and rocks rest at their feet. The baby wears nothing but his wings, his right arm wrapped around his mother’s shoulder, looking up at her with a face filled with love as she stares back at him– the pair forever locked in a staring contest that reveals every dynamic of their relationship instantly.
He obviously takes himself a bit too seriously. Standingabout four feet high and made of colored and polished stone is the figure of an Asian higher-up from the 16th century, most likely a religious figure. With greenish turquoise skin and a combed through beard that melts into his chest, his expression says something like, “Really? You’re going to wear that?”– both critical and repulsed. In his left arm he hugs a bundle of scrolls close to his body and his right hand is positioned in front of him delicately. His middle finger is missing, not that he would ever need it. His floor length deep purple robe is belted with the same color as both his beard and the wrap bundled over his scrolls– a light muddy color that might be found on the side of the road after it rains. A white color protrudes around his neck and the same color white sleeve comes out with his right hand from his long draping robe. The sleeves of his robe hang past where his knees would be, almost to the ground. And his widened, critical eyes are black and stare straight at you if you stand in the just the right place, nostrils flared. Tassels hang from the top three scrolls in the bundle and his left foot peaks out beneath his robe. But his cap is most important, a darker purple than his robe, and with a mini headboard at the back of it. Like one you might find in a tacky hotel suite with a queen-sized bed.
