My prior Art posts can be found HERE.
How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..
Let’s study art history together.
The Golden Driller
| Location | Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States |
|---|---|
| Coordinates |  36.133638°N 95.931158°W |
| Type | statue |
| Height | 23 metres (75 ft) |
| Completion date | 1953 |
On the southern part of the Great Plains stands one of the tallest statues in the United States. The Golden Driller towers over Tulsa, Oklahoma at 76 feet high and has been a symbol of Tulsa, the state of Oklahoma, and the oil and gas industry for over 60 years.
The statue was originally commissioned and constructed on behalf of an oil and gas company for an international expo event, but it was subsequently donated to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds, due to its popularity.
As a former resident of Tulsa, I have stared up at this guy many times. Did that drive me to have an incredible physique and to work in the oil and gas industry? Perhaps. Symbols do have some inspirational power. The statue’s golden hue, physique, and confident posture project a sense of supreme optimism. There may be challenges in the future, but Tulsa and its oil and gas industry will be more than a match for them.
(more on the statue, via wiki)
The Golden Driller is a 76-foot-tall (23 m), 43,500-pound (19,700 kg) statue in Tulsa, Oklahoma, depicting an oil worker. The structure is a steel frame covered with concrete and plaster. It is the seventh-tallest statue in the United States and has been located in front of the Tulsa Expo Center since 1966.
Overview
A version of the Golden Driller was originally built in 1952 by the Mid-Continent Supply Company of Fort Worth as a temporary feature of the International Petroleum Exposition. Six years later, one was erected again for the 1959 show. Due to the positive attention it attracted, the company donated the statue to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds Trust Authority which had it anatomically redesigned and permanently installed in front of the Tulsa Expo Center for the 1966 International Petroleum Exposition. The statue’s right hand rests on an oil derrick which had been moved from a depleted oil field in Seminole, Oklahoma.
An inscription at the base of the statue reads: “The Golden Driller, a symbol of the International Petroleum Exposition. Dedicated to the men of the petroleum industry who by their vision and daring have created from God’s abundance a better life for mankind.”
In 1979, the Oklahoma Legislature adopted the Golden Driller as the state monument.
As part of an online promotional contest sponsored by Kimberly-Clark in October 2006, the Golden Driller was named the grand prize as a top ten “quirkiest destination” in the United States, winning its nominator a $90,000 international vacation for two.
His stats are said to include: Belt size – 48 ft in circumference, Shoe size- 393DDD, and Hat size – 112 hard hat. His belt originally read “MID-CONTINENT”, but was changed in 1979 to the current buckle that says “TULSA”.
Branding
On May 20, 2020, as part of Tulsa’s bid for Gigafactory 5 construction by Tesla, Inc., the original “Tulsa” on the statue’s belt buckle was replaced by the world “Tesla,” to create a caricature of Elon Musk. This was the first time wrap advertising had been applied to the driller’s face.
Homage
A free-fall drop ride in Fraispertuis City amusement park in France is named Golden Driller, and uses a smaller replica of the statue as part of the decor around the ride.
You know you’ve made it as a monument when the French are making homages to you.
The video below provides a really good sense of scale for how large The Golden Driller really is.
I have to give credit to Mid-Con and Tulsa on the statue, It would have been easy to misfire on a golden statue and end up with something weird, or ominous, rather than inspiring.
What we need is to put more art and music classes back in our schools. Brain scans have shown that people are more engaged in the passive appreciation of something if their active participation has developed patterns in the brain. I think it’s only partly true; I don’t enjoy watching other people play chess, but do get a little rush when a character on Star Wars or Star Trek uses a more advanced martial arts technique.
I think the education system is so focused on testing results that it’s stopped investing in things that don’t overtly apply to those testing results – which is a mistake. It’s like signing you kid up to play only one sport, instead of several, hoping to get him a leg up. Then most of the time, at the more advanced coaching level, the coach actually likes that a kid played more than one sport.
Of course, it’s easier to say “we need to teach kids how to think, not what to think” than to actually do that.