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the Statue of Liberty

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Janelle Spyker
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« on: November 18, 2008, 01:12:29 am »





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« Reply #1 on: November 18, 2008, 01:13:28 am »

On May 2, 1885, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about construction of the Statue of Liberty


A Sound Base-ist
"Kin I git yer to do a leetle suthin' for the Pedestul fun', sir?"

"Oh, get out; you're off your base."

"Right yer air, cap'n; but it's meself that takes the liberty of axin' yer fur a few pennies ter set me on it agin."

Artist: C. G. Bush
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« Reply #2 on: November 18, 2008, 01:15:11 am »

n this scene, the cartoonist intends for the beggar seeking change from an indignant and wealthy passerby to parallel the campaign to raise funds for construction of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal.
In late 1865, Eduoard-Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, a leader of the Liberal faction in Imperial France, held a private dinner for a group of like-minded friends.  During the evening, the host reflected on the alliance between France and the United States during the American Revolution, his satisfaction that the American republic had survived the Civil War, and his hope for the establishment of a similar democracy in France.  Calling the countries "two sisters," he raised the idea of France presenting the United States with a gift that symbolized liberty (and that would draw attention to the cause in France).  One of the guests, a young sculptor named Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, was particularly inspired.

After the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), Bartholdi traveled to the United States at the suggestion of Laboulaye to promote the idea of a statue symbolizing liberty and to enhance the efforts of those trying to establish what would become the Third French Republic (1875).  Bartholdi replied, "I will try to glorify the Republic and Liberty over there, in the hope that someday I will find it again here."  He spotted the ideal location for a monument to liberty as he sailed into New York Harbor on June 8, 1871.  The artist presented his plan to President Ulysses S. Grant, editor Horace Greeley, and other influential Americans.  As he traveled across the land, he became impressed by the size of the country:  "Everything in America is big ... Here, even the peas are big."

Bartholdi returned to France with no commitment.  He and Laboulaye realized that the cost would be prohibitive unless shared by both countries, France paying for the statue and the United States for the pedestal.  In 1874, they established a fund-raising committee, the Franco-American Union, with members in both countries.  The goal was to unveil the statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World" at the centennial celebration of the United States on July 4, 1876.  Although not enough money was collected to finish the project on time, the 30-foot raised arm and torch was constructed hurriedly and arrived in August at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

Since raising the necessary funds for the project continued to be a problem, the French committee sold a limited series of specially commissioned clay models of the statue and lottery tickets for prizes (silver plate, jewelry, and art work). They collected nearly 250,000 francs by the end of 1879.  In June 1884, the completed statue was officially dedicated by Prime Minister Jules Ferry of France and Levi Morton, the U.S. minister to France (Laboulaye had died the previous December).

On the other side of the Atlantic, however, fundraising for the pedestal was stalled.  Although the Centennial Exhibition had spawned some interest, Americans were not opening their pocketbooks for what some considered a New York affair.  The press carped at its cost, and Congress refused to pass the $100,000 appropriation.  The New York legislature approved $50,000 for construction, but Governor Grover Cleveland vetoed it.

At that point, Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World, decided to generate publicity for the pedestal and his newspaper by leading the charge to raise $100,000.  He insisted that the statue would represent the entire nation, shamed the wealthy for their stinginess, and added public pressure by publishing a list of all those who donated.  The theme of the poor asking the rich for a few pennies is aptly emphasized in this cartoon.  Pulitzer's campaign of the people's paper for the people's statue worked:  the $100,000 goal was reached on August 11, 1885, and the World's circulation had risen by 50,000.

In December 1881, the American committee had chosen Richard Morris Hunt, a distinguished architect, to build the pedestal, and in 1884 agreed on one of the designs he offered.  Charles P. Stone was the chief engineer for both the pedestal's construction and the reassembly of the statue (which arrived in June 1885).  Gustave Eiffel (later, designer of the Eiffel Tower in Paris) built the interior iron and steel frame.  It took four months to secure the statue on its base.  At the time, the 305-foot Statue of Liberty was the tallest structure in New York City.

On October 28, 1886, the formal dedication of the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island (renamed Liberty Island in 1956) was attended by Bartholdi and his wife, President Grover Cleveland and his cabinet, the French ambassador, Joseph Pulitzer, and other dignitaries.  Most businesses in New York City closed to watch the parade and festivities, except in the financial district.  When the procession marched down Wall Street, the office boys inaugurated a New York tradition by gleefully throwing unfurled ticker tapes out the windows.

In 1903, Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus" (1883), welcoming "the tired and huddled masses [of immigrants] yearning to breathe free," was etched on a bronze tablet and affixed to an interior wall of the statue's base.  The poem's identification of the statue as "the mother of exiles" helped alter the emphasis of its symbolism of the United States from a beacon enlightening the world to a haven for those seeking liberty. 

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge designated the Statue of Liberty as a national monument, and in 1933 the National Park Service assumed its administration.  In the early 1980s funds were collected for the restoration of the statue and Ellis Island.  On July 4, 1986, 1.5 billion people worldwide watched on television as the Statue of Liberty was rededicated by President Ronald Reagan and celebrated with an elaborate laser and fireworks show.

Robert C. Kennedy

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0502.html
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« Reply #3 on: November 18, 2008, 01:17:22 am »

Alexandra Kollontai 1916

The Statue of Liberty

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Source: Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Articles and Speeches, Progress Publishers, 1984;
First Published: Inostrannuya Literatura (Foreign Literature), No. 2, 1970, Moscow, pp. 244-5;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, 2000;
Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.


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Which of us in our childhood did not gaze in awe at the mighty Statue of Liberty, its burning torch lighting the entrance to an international port, to a New World that still retained all its alluring, fairy-tale strangeness for the European? Which of us in our childhood was not struck by its grandeur as it soared above the New York skyscraper skyline? How pitifully small and insignificant did the huge ocean-going ships appear in these pictures as they scurried at the feet of proud and victorious Freedom!...

As our Norwegian steamer Bergensfjord slowly and carefully picked its way among the business-like scurry of ships from all the great nations of the world, we naive Europeans eagerly strained our eyes to catch a glimpse of her, the Statue of Liberty promised us [from childhood].

Then, on my first visit to America a year ago, the Statue of Liberty was hidden by a thick autumn fog which shrouded from our naively searching eyes that symbol which once caused the hearts of our European fathers and grandfathers to beat with triumphant happiness and exultation.

For me, the Statue of Liberty remained shrouded, mysterious, beckoning, the powerful image of our imagination. I saw it for the first time four and a half months later, after my whirlwind tour of the United States... By then America had already ceased to be for me the promised land of possibility. During those four and a half months I had seen politicians insistently preaching in favour of militarism and the bitter struggle waged by labour against unrestrained American capital, the power wielded by the American police and the omnipotence of the trust kings, the corruption of American courts, the servility of the American capitalist press ... and the 'freedom' of the independent church... Now I had a clear picture of what America is really like, a clear picture of the 'land of freedom', of the New World discovered by Columbus and still enticing the European!

It was then, standing on board the steamer bearing me back to the Old World, that I first saw the Statue of Liberty. It was a clear, cold day in early spring. Slowly, as if unwilling to leave the safety of the port for the stormy unknown of the open sea, the same Bergensfjord sailed past the 'eighth wonder of the world', past the statue whose picture is known to all.

Now it was not hidden by fog, now the sun illuminated every line of this bronze image. And still I refused to believe my eyes. Is that the Statue of Liberty? So tiny, lost in the noise of the harbour and framed against the soaring skyscrapers of the Wall Street banks. Was this powerless, tiny figure shrinking before the all-powerful gigantic skyscrapers, those guardians of financial deals, the Statue of Liberty we had pictured to ourselves?

Perhaps it is the insolence of the politicians and the kings of capital, curtailing day by day the freedoms won by the blood of the forefathers of the modern Uncle Sam, that is forcing the Statue of Liberty to shrink, to curl up in dismay and shame? When you are at the mercy of the ocean, when you look ahead to fantastic adventures that seem to come straight from a medieval tale ... then you are inevitably inclined to the mystic, ready to believe in a great miracle, in fairy tales...

The outlines of the city, the huge, twisting, relentlessly upward-thrusting lines of the New York skyscrapers, begin to blur. The Statue of Liberty has long since become a scarcely visible dot. It has disappeared. A little while longer, and America will lose reality for us, will become one of the images of the succession of life's memories.

It was then that I realised that the New World, the Statue of Liberty, is simply an old and forgotten legend, a fairy tale of precapitalist times which can only be recounted from the reminiscences of our grandfathers.

For our grandfathers and great-grandfathers the New World was truly the land of freedom. Here, whatever they had been in ageing Europe, they felt themselves to be the sons and equal citizens of a free country. Here they could pray to their God according to their own beloved rites. Here they could still believe that a man could forge his own happiness, wealth and destiny, with his own hands. Here the fairy of success still freely beckoned to unsettled lands and fruitful plains, to barren mountains concealing gold.

Back in old Europe, feudalism had still not receded before the onslaught of the privileged trading aristocracy of the bourgeoisie, the air was still redolent with incense, society was still dominated by the inequality of social strata and classes, and men were still oppressed by ugly, age-old prejudices. Is it any wonder that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers stretched out their hands rapturously to the shores of the New World and fell down before the green-bronze Statue of Liberty?

But how distant that all is now! The tales of American freedom have become mere legend!

The Statue of Liberty has been suppressed. The skyscrapers have robbed her of her halo, and now it is no longer she who soars above the bay of this international city, no longer she who lights the way into the international port, into the New World. Millions of lights from the windows of the fifty-storey skyscraper office-blocks eclipse the light of the goddess of Liberty. The grey giants look out derisively over the narrow New York streets which, jammed with businessmen and their clerks, thread their way far below like canyon streams between cliff walls. And it is these solid walls of stone, the safe refuge of the kings of American capital, which now more completely express the 'spirit' that reigns over the continent of Columbus than the pitiful, shrunken, green statue that seems to be embarrassed.

I saw the statue a second time only recently, this time lit up by the rays of the early morning sun. And, strange to relate! – this time the passengers did not gaze out in search of the Statue of Liberty. It was as if the hard and bloody year that had just passed had taught its lesson to Europeans who had once so easily believed in a happiness to be found across the ocean. It was not the Statue of Liberty they were looking for, but the steamer carrying the American authorities and representatives of the emigration bureau who sorted out the passengers and dispatched the majority of the 3rd-class, and perhaps also some of us, the 2nd-class passengers, to the infamous 'Island of Tears'.

And, indeed, the steamer did pull up alongside our floating home... The long procession of 3rd-class passengers must undergo a humiliating interrogation and a number of unpleasant formalities, and must then wait upon a barren island until kind friends come to their assistance. It might even happen that 3rd-class, and sometimes even 2nd-class passengers are unceremoniously taken off to an American jail until their identity is confirmed.

However, God forbid that anything of the kind should happen to 1st-class passengers! Could a 1st-class passenger, carrying in his pocket cheques for a Wall Street bank, be an unwelcome foreigner in the great republic? The red carpet is put down for the 1st-class passenger, and for him the Statue of Liberty makes her dim torch blaze anew. This colleague of the modern kings of the free republic will receive everything that the Statue of Liberty once promised to every newcomer to the New World.

But how dimly that same statue lights the way to that New World for those who were only able to buy a 3rd-class ticket...

And one feels ashamed for the Statue of Liberty, and regrets those sweet moments of expectation a year ago when we, naive Europeans, strained our eyes to see in the autumn mist that statue we remembered from children's illustrations which taught us to love the 'New World', to love a land built by the people themselves, to love political liberty!

 


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http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1916/statue-liberty.htm
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« Reply #4 on: November 18, 2008, 01:18:57 am »

« Last Edit: November 18, 2008, 01:23:11 am by Janelle Spyker » Report Spam   Logged
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« Reply #5 on: November 18, 2008, 01:19:50 am »

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« Reply #6 on: November 18, 2008, 01:21:21 am »

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« Reply #7 on: November 18, 2008, 01:26:23 am »


Liberty Enlightening the World (French: La liberté éclairant le monde), known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty (Statue de la Liberté), is a colossal statue given to the United States by France in 1886, standing at Liberty Island, New York in the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans. The copper-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship between the two nations. The sculptor was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the Repoussé technique.

The statue shows a woman standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked crown representing the seven seas and continents, holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand. The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal, itself on an irregular eleven-pointed star foundation. The statue is 151' 1" (46.5 m) tall, with the foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m). The tablet contains the text "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776) commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Worldwide, the Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable icons of the United States,[2] and, in a more general sense, represents liberty and escape from oppression. The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe. In terms of visual impact, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from il Sancarlone or the Colossus of Rhodes. The statue is a central part of Statue of Liberty National Monument and is administered by the National Park Service.
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« Reply #8 on: November 18, 2008, 01:28:20 am »



Symbolism

The broken shackles lying at Lady Liberty's feet signify liberation from oppression and tyranny.  The USIA states that the seven spikes in the crown represent the seven seas and seven continents. As the statue's name indicates, the torch signifies enlightenment. The tablet in her hand shows the date of the nation's birth (July 4, 1776).

Since 1903, the statue has been associated with Emma Lazarus's poem "The New Colossus" and has acquired a new meaning as a symbol of welcome to immigrants.
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« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2008, 01:29:50 am »

Discussions in France over a suitable gift to the United States to mark the Centennial of the American Declaration of Independence were headed by the politician and sympathetic writer of the history of the United States, Édouard René Lefèvre de Laboulaye. French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi was commissioned to design a sculpture with the year 1876 in mind for completion. The idea for the commemorative gift then grew out of the political turmoil which was shaking France at the time. The French Third Republic was still considered as a "temporary" arrangement by many, who wished a return to monarchism, or to some form of constitutional authoritarianism which they had known under Napoleon. The idea of giving a colossal representation of republican virtues to a "sister" republic across the sea served as a focus for the republican cause against other politicians.

Various sources cite different models for the face of the statue. One indicated the then-recently widowed Isabella Eugenie Boyer, the wife of Isaac Singer, the sewing-machine industrialist. "She was rid of the uncouth presence of her husband, who had left her with only his most socially desirable attributes: his fortune and... his children. She was, from the beginning of her career in Paris, a well-known figure. As the good-looking French widow of an American industrialist she was called upon to be Bartholdi's model for the Statue of Liberty."  Another source believed that the "stern face" belonged to Bartholdi's mother, Charlotte Bartholdi (1801-1891), with whom he was very close.  National Geographic magazine also pointed to his mother, noting that Bartholdi never denied nor explained the resemblance.  The first model, on a small scale, was built in 1870. This first statue is now in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris.

While in a visit to Egypt that was to shift his artistic perspective from simply grand to colossal, Bartholdi was inspired by the project of Suez Canal which was being undertaken by Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, who later became a lifelong friend of his. He envisioned a giant lighthouse standing at the entrance to Suez Canal and drew plans for it. It would be patterned after the Roman goddess Libertas, modified to resemble a robed Egyptian peasant, a fallaha, with light beaming out from both a headband and a torch thrust dramatically upward into the skies. Bartholdi presented his plans to the Egyptian Khediev, Isma'il Pasha, in 1867 and, with revisions, again in 1869, but the project was never commissioned.
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« Reply #10 on: November 18, 2008, 01:30:37 am »


The first "Statue of Liberty", today located in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris.
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« Reply #11 on: November 18, 2008, 01:31:07 am »

It was agreed upon that in a joint effort the American people were to build the base, and the French people were responsible for the Statue and its assembly in the United States. In France, public donations, various forms of entertainment including notably performances of La liberté éclairant le monde (Liberty enlightening the world) by soon-to-be famous composer Charles Gounod at Paris Opera, and a charitable lottery were among the methods used to raise the 2,250,000 francs ($250,000). In the United States, benefit theatrical events, art exhibitions, auctions and prize fights assisted in providing needed funds.

Meanwhile in France, Bartholdi required the assistance of an engineer to address structural issues associated with designing such a colossal copper sculpture. Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) was commissioned to design the massive iron pylon and secondary skeletal framework which allows the Statue's copper skin to move independently yet stand upright. Eiffel delegated the detailed work to his trusted structural engineer, Maurice Koechlin.

Bartholdi had initially planned to have the statue completed and presented to the United States on July 4, 1876, but a late start and subsequent delays prevented it. However, by that time the right arm and torch were completed. This part of the statue was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where visitors were charged 50 cents to climb the ladder to the balcony. The money raised this way was used to start funding the pedestal.
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« Reply #12 on: November 18, 2008, 01:32:03 am »



Image of a page from U. S. Patent D11023, copied from USPTO website, http://patimg1.uspto.gov/.DImg?Docid=US0D0011023&PageNum=1&IDKey=B53692FA9883&ImgFormat=tif and cropped and reduced in size.

This is Bartholdi's design patent for the Statue of Liberty, issued in 1879.

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« Reply #13 on: November 18, 2008, 01:32:52 am »



Detail from Pedestal for Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island, New York Harbor, drawn by W. P. Snyder and published in Harper's Weekly, June 6, 1885.
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« Reply #14 on: November 18, 2008, 01:33:56 am »


Circa 1880 model of the plaster mock-up of Statue_of_Liberty
 
Source Self-made photograph of the mock-up realized by Bartholdi circa 1880. The whole scenery with the small figurines etc... was made by Bartholdi himself circa 1880. Photographed at the Musee des Arts et Metiers.
 
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