She briefly mentions a sculpture titled The Greek Slave. She also focuses a lot on the sculpture The Wounded Indian:
Chrysler Museum of Art
Flint writes that the statue "served to commemorate both the fall of an individual warrior and the demise of an entire race." I also think this statue (visually), however true at the time, has shaped today's preconceptions of Indians, especially the way they dress and act.
One thing that I found particularly interesting was the parallel of the exhibition space to the American land. Flint uses the term terra nulla which means "land belonging to no one." At this point, I believe Americans had yet to expand all the way to modern day California. There was a lot of land "undiscovered," at least by "civilized people." The exhibition space paralleled this "vastness." Apparently the United States asked for more space in the Crystal Palace than they could fill.
In order to fill the space the U.S. put sculptures of Native Americans: "the terra nulla of the East Aisle became a site for the exhibition of two Native figures, and thus acted as a further reminder that "imperial space" is rarely as vacant as it is presented by the imperialist."
Despite all of the negative connotations of the two statues, there were a few positive things that came from its exhibition:
"influenced protest against white, imperialist greed"
"drew connections between the exploitation of Indians and the cruelties of slavery"
:)
[Victorian Literature]
No comments:
Post a Comment