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.
Portlandia (Portland, Oregon)
| Artist | Raymond Kaskey |
|---|---|
| Year | 1985 |
| Type | Statue |
| Medium | Copper repoussé |
| Dimensions | 34 feet 10 inches (10.62 meters) high and weighs 6.5 short tons (5,900 kilograms) |
| Location | Portland, Oregon, United States |
This is one of the most well-known statues on the West Coast of the United States, sitting right in downtown Portland, Oregon. This is visually interesting for several reasons. First, obviously, why does this person wearing Greek attire and wielding a trident? Second, it’s the second largest copper repoussé statue in the entire United States – just after the Statue of Liberty. I guess if we can have a copper green statue wearing a pointed crown and holding up a torch, just off the coast of New York, we can have another giant copper lady holding a trident on the West Coast.
Actually, this is based on the city seal of Portland, first designed in the 19th century (when all thinks Ancient Greek were still very on trend.) I’ll show you the seal below and you can decide how the artist did.
Honestly… excellent work bringing that to life. The seal and the statue feature “Lady Commerce” which might feel ironic, depending on whether you think the stereotyping of Portland as the capital city of American Marxism is fair.
If you do think it’s fair, then it’s worth considering that this statue is only 40 years old. We were putting up bronze statues of Lady Commerce in Portland, Oregon not that long ago. Did Portland change a lot in four decades? Undoubtedly. Why? Was that change ultimately a net positive? That’s something to consider. We sometimes get stuck (especially when we are young) into believing that the statue quo is the natural state of things When we’re young, it’s all we’ve known. When we ago though, we often find ourselves trying to steer changes back toward the familiar footing of our own youth. That’s not necessarily realistic, either, though if change can happen rapidly in one direction, it can happen rapidly in the opposite one. Pendulums swing.
Personally, when I think of “Portlandia” I think of the Fred Armisen show from about a decade ago.
If you’re interesting in learning more about the statue, let me direct you to read onward! (via wiki)
Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey located above the entrance of the Portland Building in downtown Portland, Oregon. It is the second largest copper repoussé statue in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty.
History
Portlandia was commissioned by the City of Portland in 1985. Sculptor Raymond Kaskey was paid $228,000 in public funds and reportedly an additional $100,000 in private donations.
Kaskey and his assistant Michael Lasell built sections of the statue in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., and sent the parts to Portland by ship. It was assembled at a barge-building facility owned by Gunderson, Inc, and was installed on the Portland Building on October 6, 1985, after being floated up the Willamette River on a barge.
Description
The statue is based on the design of the Portland city seal. The statue depicts a female figure, Lady Commerce, dressed in classical clothes, holding a trident in her left hand and reaching down with her right. The statue is above street level and faces a relatively narrow, tree-lined street.
The statue is 34 feet 10 inches (10.62 m) high and weighs 6.5 short tons (5,900 kg).
An accompanying plaque includes the official dedication poem, also titled “Portlandia”, written by Portland lawyer and poet Ronald Talney:
“She kneels down, and from the quietness of copper reaches out. We take that stillness into ourselves, and somewhere deep in the earth our breath becomes her city. If she could speak this is what she would say: Follow that breath. Home is the journey we make. This is how the world knows where we are.”
Copyright
Despite being funded largely by the City’s Public Art Program, Kaskey retained the copyright to the sculpture and has threatened lawsuits against unlicensed depictions of Portlandia.
The statue appears in the title sequence of the TV series Portlandia, the result of “lengthy” negotiations with Kaskey that required the statue not be used “in a disparaging way”. In 2012, Laurelwood Brewing used an illustration of the statue on the label of Portlandia Pils, a beer it introduced; the brewery later found out about Kaskey’s copyright and reached a cash settlement with Kaskey.
For a short history of the statue, and a video depicting it as it appears in place, I highly recommend the following video:
