(LifeSiteNews) — A huge, 12-foot-high statue of an overweight black woman was placed in New York City’s Times Square on April 29 – although it is not, thankfully, a permanent installation. Titled “Grounded in the Stars,” artist Thomas J. Price claims to be attempting to “instigate meaningful connections and bind intimate emotional states that allow for deeper reflection around the human condition and greater cultural diversity,” whatever that means.
In fact, the Times Square website claims that in the woman’s depiction “one recognizes a shared humanity, yet the contrapposto pose of her body and the ease of her stance is a subtle nod to Michelangelo’s David.” The nod is so subtle it is, in fact, indiscernible. But more interesting is this statement: “Through scale, materiality, and posture, “Grounded in the Stars” disrupts traditional ideas around what defines a triumphant figure and challenges who should be rendered immortal through monumentalization.”
That rather gives the game away. Some have mused that the statue is part of an ongoing “uglification” of major cities, and another asked whether it is “a clear example of intentional, cultural subversion meant to destroy what little remains of proper society.” But Price clearly understands that importance of statues and what they represent. You can tell a lot about a society based on who they decide to honor. Price, as the sculpture description put it, wishes to challenge “who should be rendered immortal through monumentalization.”
As I noted last year, that is why the statues have been the focal point of so many of our recent cultural clashes. Statues of Churchill, John A. Macdonald, the Queen, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and more have been torn down and vandalized. Progressives wish to do away with the pantheon of old heroes in order to make way for a pantheon of new heroes. Down with dead white men; in with activists. This isn’t conjecture. In a 2019 interview, Price stated his goal is to “subvert the traditional Euro-American art historical canon.”
Or as the Times Square website boasts, the “woman in Grounded in the Stars cuts a stark contrast to the pedestaled permanent monuments – both white, both men – which bookend Duffy Square.” Subversion, indeed.
This is not to say, of course, that there aren’t plenty of black women worthy of a statue (considering some of the recent racial rhetoric on the Right, these provisos now need to be explicit), Harriet Tubman being the most obvious example. I personally have a bust of Tubman in my office. Phyllis Wheatley, who has a fantastic statue in Boston, is another. But Tubman and Wheatley deserves statues because they were monumental figures, not because some artist decided to “subvert” the historical canon by challenging who was worthy of “monumentalization.”
“How do you take over an empire?” Carl Trueman noted some time ago. “The answer is simple to state but somewhat more difficult to achieve in practice: You simply need to control time and space.” How do we know who has achieved power? Simply look at who controls public spaces. Progressives have always understood this. Price certainly does.
