{"id":8934,"date":"2015-05-16T14:37:29","date_gmt":"2015-05-16T18:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=8934"},"modified":"2015-05-19T10:07:27","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T14:07:27","slug":"thinking-about-the-21st-century-monument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2015\/05\/thinking-about-the-21st-century-monument\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about the 21st-Century Monument"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""The<\/a>
“The Thinker,” by Auguste Rodin, March 4, 1927 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A lot of folks have given a lot of thought as to who The Thinker <\/i>is\u00a0and what he’s thinking about. Not everyone agrees on a single interpretation, not even the sculptor Auguste Rodin, who imagined many and wouldn\u2019t say for sure which one he intended. Anyway, Rodin believed works of art should speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

So everyone else got to have their thoughts about The Thinker, <\/i>which made it very, very popular\u2014and gave it its staying power.<\/p>\n

That power is why this cast of the\u00a0Thinker\u00a0<\/i>migrated from Paris and landed temporarily on Logan Square in 1927, awaiting completion of Philadelphia\u2019s Rodin Museum<\/a>. The Thinker<\/i> had spoken, as it were, to Philadelphia motion picture magnate and philanthropist Jules Mastbaum, who went on a Rodin buying binge in 1925 and 1926. Mastbaum returned home from Paris with a cache of 106 Rodin bronzes. The Thinker<\/i> would have the place of honor; he\u2019d be the first to welcome visitors. All the more important to know what he was thinking.<\/p>\n

Since Rodin first modeled the figure in 1880 as a central element for his monumental, complex Gates of Hell<\/a>,<\/i> it made some sense that The Thinker<\/i> might be the artist himself. Or, possibly it could be Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy<\/i>, which inspired the sculpture. But by 1904, Rodin freed The Thinker<\/a><\/i> from his Gates<\/i> project and \u201cconceived another thinker, a naked man, seated upon a rock, his feet drawn under him, his fist against his teeth\u201d \u2026dreaming.<\/p>\n

This larger, muscular stand-alone Thinker<\/i> did more<\/i> than dream, explained Rodin. \u201cThe fertile thought slowly elaborated itself within his brain.\u201d He is \u201cno longer a dreamer, he is a creator.\u201d A romantic idea, and a popular one.<\/p>\n

Rodin cast and re-cast his thinkers in monumental forms\u2014dozens of times. They proliferated in public places from Paris to Louisville, Dresden to Detroit, guaranteeing The Thinker<\/i> unfortunate fate as a visual clich\u00e9, but also assuring that thinking about The Thinker<\/i> was anyone\u2019s<\/i> game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith his worn body and face of a primitive man,\u201d The Thinker<\/i> is, speculated critic Octave Mirbeau<\/a>, the image of a cave man, looking at the unfolding below of the crimes and passions of his descendants.\u201d He is \u201caustere nudity, in his pensive force.\u201d He is \u201cthe same as a wild Adam, implacable Dante, and merciful Virgil\u2026but he is above all The Ancestor, the first man, na\u00efve and without conscience, bending over that which he will engender.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cast in monumental scale, made of bronze to endure the ages and installed in civic settings, The Thinker<\/i> became everyman for everyone, nearly everywhere.<\/p>\n

Our public art, our memorials and our monuments are part of a civic cultural collective, or they should be<\/i>. They should<\/i> be ours to help us consider, recognize and remember, ours to help us organize the past and shape future memory.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work that way in the 1920s. For all of his generosity, Jules Mastbaum usurped civic power acquiring Rodins for exhibition at the Sesquicentennial Exposition and as a subsequent gift for the City. It\u2019s hard to fault Mastbaum for his philanthropy, but we could fault him for his presumptions. Mastbaum crossed a line thinking The Thinker<\/i> was an appropriate idea of a monument for the 20th<\/sup> century city.<\/p>\n

What would other Philadelphians in Mastbaum\u2019s time rather have seen cast in bronze and displayed in public? They weren’t consulted.<\/p>\n

Nearly a century later, the tables are turned. Now, thanks to Monument Lab<\/a>,\u00a0an innovative project taking place in Philadelphia between May 15 and June 7, 2015, we all<\/em> have a shot at becoming Mastbaums. We<\/i> get to propose monuments\u00a0appropriate<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>for the 21<\/span>st<\/sup> century city. <\/span>We<\/i> get to say what they are, what we expect of them, and where they\u2019d have the most meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

When imagination is at work, there are no limits.\u00a0 So what will it be?<\/p>\n

Visit Monument Lab<\/a>\u00a0in City Hall courtyard and submit your ideas, your inspirations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of folks have given a lot of thought as to who The Thinker is\u00a0and what he’s thinking about. Not everyone agrees on a single interpretation, not even the sculptor Auguste Rodin, who imagined many and wouldn\u2019t say for sure which one he intended. Anyway, Rodin believed works of art should speak for themselves. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}