Public Sculpture: Andrew Dickson White at Home on Cornell Quad

Ithaca, NY. Andrew Dickson White statue on Cornell University quad. Karl Bitter, sculptor, 1915. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012.

Public Sculpture: Andrew Dickson White at Home on Cornell Quad
by Samuel D. Gruber

I recently wrote about the monument to Syracuse fireman and philanthropist Hamilton S. White.  Now I'd like to turn to a statue of his cousin, Andrew Dickson White (1832 – 1918), who is sitting pretty on Cornell University's historic quad, in Ithaca, New York.  Andrew White was an educator, diplomat, historian, and bibliophile. 

White was also co-founder with Ezra Cornell of Cornell University, where today he sits in bronze, very much at home in front of the classical style Goodwin Smith Hall.   The statue, by noted American Renaissance sculptor Karl Theodore Francis Bitter (1867-1915), was installed almost a century ago, in 1915.    Austrian-born Bitter was a leading sculptor of memorials and architectural sculpture.

Bitter and White chose the seated position for the commemorative statue. He had previously used the pose for a statue to Dr. William Pepper, placed on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in 1896, and in 1914 and 1915, about the time he was working on the Andrew White representation, on statues of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. 

 

Philadelphia, Pa. Statue of Dr. William Pepper, University of Pennsylvania. Karl Bitter, sculptor 1896.  Photo from Schevill, Ferdinand, Karl Bitter: A Biography (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1917).

This posture has a long tradition; in Greek and Roman sculpture philosophers, poets (and some gods) were often depicted seated, and Roman emperors were also sometimes shown seated.  Statues of enthroned leaders - emperors, kings and popes - have been common since the Middle Ages.  For men of ideas and culture the seated posture came with age and implied sagacity, and this format was especially revived by sculptors of the American Renaissance movement as an alternative to the ever-popular standing and equestrian figure formats.   There are many early 20th-century examples of seated figures, and in my recent travels I seem to be quite attuned to them.   For example, a seated figure of Benjamin Franklin by sculptor John J. Boyle was installed in 1899 in front of Philadelphia's Main Post Office, at 9th and Chestnut Streets (it is now on the University of Pennsylvania campus), and a copy was placed in Paris in 1905. 

Paris, France. Benjamin Franklin monument at Square de Yorktown, 1899 / 1905.  John J. Boyle, sculptor. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2013)

In 1910,  John Quincy Adams Ward created a bronze statue of financier August Belmont, originally for the Belmont burial plot, but is now in front of the the Preservation Society of Newport County at the corner of Bellevue and Narragansett avenues in Newport.
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Newport, Rhode Island.  August Belmont statue, John Quincy Adams Ward, sculptor, 1910.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008).

Andrew White was Cornell's first president and served as a professor in the Department of History. He was intensely interested in architecture, and he donated 4,000 architecture books to Cornell to help teach architecture (as well as the remainder of his 30,000 book collection) and this became the basis of the Cornell Library's esteemed architecture collection. White commissioned Cornell's first architecture student William Henry Miller to build his impressive house on the Cornell campus. 

Architecturally, the Andrew White statute serves an important purpose.  It humanizes the vast Cornell quad, one of the largest formal spaces on any American campus.  The relaxed pose is a softer counterpoint to the formal classical columns of Goldwin Smith hall, erected in 1904 afters designs by Carrére and Hastings.  The presence of the seated, relaxed Andrew D. White makes the big space seem smaller; more like a living room or salon than a military assembly ground.

White was the U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1879–1881), and first president of the American Historical Association (1884–1886). Upstate New York Republicans unsuccessfully attempted to nominate him for governor in 1876 and for congress in 1886. Following his resignation as Cornell's President in 1885, White served as Minister to Russia (1892–1894), President of the American delegation to The Hague Peace Conference (1899), and again as Ambassador to Germany (1897–1902)

Ithaca, NY. Andrew Dickson White statue on Cornell University quad. Karl Bitter, sculptor, 1915. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012.

Ithaca, NY. Andrew Dickson White statue on Cornell University quad. Karl Bitter, sculptor, 1915. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012.

Fayette Park's Other Firefighter: The Philip Eckel Monument

Cross posted from My Central New York

 

Syracuse, NY. Philip Eckel Monument in original location at North Salina, State and Butternut Street intersection. From Views of Syracuse, N.Y. (Portland, Maine: Lyman H. Nelson Co. n.d.)

 

Syracuse, NY. Philip Eckel Monument Fayette Firefighters' Memorial Park. photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2008.

 

Syracuse, NY. Philip Eckel Monument Fayette Firefighters' Memorial Park. photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2008. For a portrait of photo portrait of Eckel click here.

 

Syracuse, NY. Philip Eckel Monument Fayette Firefighters' Memorial Park. photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2008.

Fayette Park's Other Firefighter: The Philip Eckel Monument
by Samuel D. Gruber

Continuing the theme of Syracuse Firefighters, begun with the recent posts about Engine House Number 10 and the Hamilton White Monument, it is time to give some consideration to the Philip Eckel Monument, also now situated in Fayette Firefighters Memorial Park, but once proudly displayed at an important intersection on the city's Northside, in the heart of what was once a strong German immigrant neighborhood, where it was dedicated in 1900.  

The history of the Eckel monument is a good lesson on the history of local fame, immigrant pride, city traffic, and public taste.  What was one of the most visible public monuments in Syracuse is now hidden away among the foliage of Fayette Park.  

Read the entire blog entry here

Gail Sherman Corbett's Hamilton White Monument, Syracuse

One of the finest public monuments in Syracuse is the Hamilton White Memorial installed in Fayette Park (now Fayette Firefighters Park) more than a century ago.  Here is a post about the monument, its talented sculptor Gail Sherman, and the subject of the commemoration, firefighter Hamilton White.

Cross posted from My Central New York , Saturday, July 6, 2013

Gail Sherman Corbett's Hamilton White Monument at Fayette Park

Syracuse, NY. Fayette (or Firefighter's) Park. Hamilton White Monument, Gail Sherman Corbett, sculptor. Postcard.

Syracuse, NY. Fayette (or Firefighter's) Park. Hamilton White Monument, Gail Sherman Corbett, sculptor.. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008)

Gail Sherman Corbett's Hamilton White Monument at Fayette Park
by Samuel D. Gruber

When I started this blog, one of my intentions was to report on the most important, interesting and beautiful (yes, I still use that term occasionally) public monuments in Central New York. A few years ago (!) I wrote about the restoration of the Kirkpatrick Monument at Washington Square, and mentioned the earlier monument to Hamilton Salisbury White created by the same artistic team - Gail Sherman and Harvey Wiley Corbett, (who married in 1905) and restored by the same women, Sharon BuMann. The monument is situated on the west side of Fayette Park (now Fayette Firefighters Memorial Park) and provides a well-designed architectural and yet intimate introduction to the park from Downtown.

Syracuse, NY. Fayette (or Firefighter's) Park. Hamilton White Monument, dlt. Gail Sherman Corbett, sculptor.. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2008).

Because my most recent post was about a turn-of-the-20^th century Engine House Number 10, I'd like to now write more about the Hamilton White monument since it received a lot of attention when it was made, and it celebrates one of Syracuse's most colorful characters, and the founder and patron saint of our Fire Department. 

"The monument was erected by popular subscription as an evidence of respect to the memory of Hamilton Salisbury White, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Syracuse who took a keen interest in the improvement of the fire department, devoting much time and money to the discovery and utilization of the latest and best methods of fighting fire, and who met his death a little over six years ago while personally helping to extinguish a serious fire that threatened the business part of the city.” [from full article in The Craftsman, quoted at length below]

Read the entire blog post here.

Paris: Walter Spitzer Bronze Monument to the Deportation to the Velodrome d'Hiver Victms

Cross posted from Samuel Gruber's Jewish Art & Monument

Monday, July 1, 2013

Paris: Monuments to the Deportation to the Velodrome d'Hiver Victims

Paris, France.  Monument to the Victims of the Deportation to the Velodrome d'Hiver by Walter Spitzer, dedicated 1994. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012.

Paris, France.  Monument to the Victims of the Deportation to the Velodrome d'Hiver by Walter Spitzer, dedicated 1994. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012.

Paris: Monuments to the Deportation to the Velodrome d'Hiver
by Samuel S. Gruber

Paris is a city of monuments - some better known than others.  In 1993, a monument was created to commemorate the round-up of 14,000 Jews in Paris and their detainment in the Vélodrome d'Hiver an indoor velodrome (cycle track) at the corner of the boulevard de Grenelle and the rue Nélaton in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, not far from the Eiffel Tower.  The deportees, many of whom were women and children, were held in the velodrome for several days before their deportation to transit camps, leading in turn to their removal to Auschwitz, and their deaths.

The deportation of Paris's Jews was one of many callous acts of French collaboration in Nazi aims, which have gradually received more attention in France and abroad.  Émile Hennequin, director of the Paris police, ordered on July 12, 1942 that "the operations must be effected with the maximum speed, without pointless speaking and without comment."  Local police reports document that beginning at 4:00 a.m. on 16 July 1942, 13,152 Jews were arrested, of which 5,802 (44%) were women and 4,051 (31%) were children.  Some people were warned by the French Resistance or hidden and escaped being rounded up.  The arrested had to leave their homes quickly - they could take only a few items; blanket, sweater, shoes and two shirts.  Conditions in the velodrome were horrendous, with little food and water, few toilets, and no other amenities.  The deportation was remembered in Marcel Ophuls now classic documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) and more recently an attempt to visually recreate the internment was made in the film Sarah's Key, released in 2010, based on the 2002 novel of the same name by Tatiana de Rosnay.  The book and film stirred intentional interest in the history of the round-up and the fate of French Jews, and I suppose led to my own visit to the memorials last when in Paris December.

Read the full blogpost here.

  
See more photos of the markers and monuments here.

Brandon Vermont Civil War Monument: Solitary Soldier Stands Guard

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Brandon Vermont Civil War Monument: Solitary Soldier Stands Guard 

by Samuel D. Gruber

I've posted several examples (from Detroit & Troy) of a the big "wedding cake" type Civil War monuments popular in cities in the late 19th century.  More common, of course, are the many smaller monuments to found in almost every town in new England and Upstate New York - and throughout, I am sure, all of the Union states.

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

These monuments are memorials to the fallen as much a celebrations of any victory.  For the most part they were erected a generation after the war, when many of the soldiers who fought had reached maturity, and now occupied leading positions in government and business.  During the sometime disillusioning decades of Reconstruction, these monuments affirmed the value of sacrifice.  A good recent article by Nancy Price Graff discusses the ubiquity and similarity of Civil War monuments in Vermont - where one sixth of all Vermonter who fought in the conflict died on the battlefield or of wounds and disease.

The monuments tend to be sober and often somber.  The monument of Brandon, Vermont (where I recently visited friends) is a good example.  An an important intersection in the town a single uniformed, mustachioed, Union soldier stands on sentinel duty - guarding the town so to speak - and perpetuating the memory of his fallen comrades, the 54 men of Brandon how died in the war.  (This type of memorial is timeless, and recalls to me especially (albeit dressed) the steady repeated pose of Greek kouroi, possibly set up - at least sometimes - as funerary monuments.

The Brandon monument was inaugurated in 1886.  It is made by the White Bros. of Barre, Vermont granite. The sculptor is unknown, but this particular model of Civil War soldier is frequently found on monuments across the country.   

The memory of the Civil War lasted long after the fighting stopped.  In fact, the war remained a vivid part of family and civic culture for decades, really until the generation that experienced the fighting and loss was gone.  Though the country's last union soldier (Albert Woolsen) did not die until 1956,  the major generational passing took place after fifty years, just in time for a new set of memories - those of World War I - to take center stage in public life (and monuments).

 You can see pictures of many other Vermont Civil war monuments here.

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Like its contemporaries in Detroit and Troy, the smaller Brandon monument plays an important role in the townscape.  It is immediately visible upon entry to the town from the south (Route 7 from Rutland), and stands of the junction of several important roads and streets, especially Park Street, with its many fines houses four the 1830s and following.  Like similar monuments, it is hub around which this part of town revolves.

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Names of the dead. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Brandon, Vermont. Civil War Monument, 1886. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Memorial to Munich's White Rose Resistance Group - This Week is the 70th Anniversary of their Last Act, Trial and Execution
by Samuel D. Gruber (all photos Samuel D. Gruber 2006)

This week marks the 70th anniversary of the resistance, arrest and trial of the White Rose group in Munich, Germany - one of the only (the only?) public acts by Germans in Germany of Nazi power and policy.  You can read a detailed account of their resistance and fate here. 

An article in the JTA today recalls the group and lessons that should be learned. 

The events and the brave young perpetrators are well known in Germany where the group has (justly) achieved hero status.  Their moral courage acts as a reminder of all that other Germans did not do - and acts as a cover and solace in Germany today for the the apathy, neglect, ignorance and fear of many, and the full-throated support of Nazi policies of so many more during the 1930s and the war years.  Streets and squares have been named after White Rose group, and the group has been the subject of many movies. 

The most interesting memorial to their action is installed around the Ludwig Maximilian University building in Munich, where on Feb 18th, 1943, they scattered leaflets before their arrest.  Today, one can find memorial traces - in metal - set into the pavement of the area in front of the University building where the leaflets fell and scattered.  This space is now named Geschwister Scholl Platz (Scholl Sibling Place).  Included are portraits, biographies, leaflets and a farewell letter from White Rose member Willi Graf. 

Two large fountains dominate the space outside the University building in which the commemorative plaques are intentionally set - though seemingly haphazard.  In good weather these are popular places for students to sit and socialize - no doubt the White rose monument is walked over in haste, but it also must be much noticed by today's student generation.

At present (Feb 2013) I do not know the artist who designed this memorial, or the circumstances of its installation.  So far, the descriptions of the monument that I have consulted do not give this information.

In the atrium of the main university building, where the group distributed their sixth leaflet on February 18, 1943,  there is a small exhibit about the group  This is a bronze relief (1953) by Lothar Dietz that commemorates the group's executed members: Willi Graf, professor Kurt Huber, Hans Leipelt, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans and Sophie Schol.  More information (in German) here.  There is also a bronze bust of Sophie Schol alone.

There are several other markers and memorials throughout Munich commemorating the White Rose group.  A listing of these can be found on the webpage White Rose Walking Tour.  More information about traces of the Nazi era in Munich can be found on the webpage Traces of Evil: remaining Nazi Sites in Germany.

Mestrovic and Job in Paris and Syracuse

Paris, France. Job  by Ivan Mestoric (1945) on view at the Musee Rodin.  Supplicant Persephone (1945) can be seen standing in the court in the bottom image.  All photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2013

Mestrovic and Job in Paris and Syracuse
by Samuel D. Gruber

Visiting the Musee Rodin in  Paris a few weeks ago brought me face to face with an old friend - Ivan Mestrovic's agonized bronze statue of a crouching, suffering Job.  The work, completed in 1945 in Rome finalized a vision of Job that Mestrovic first conceived when in a fascist prison in Croatia in 1941.  Both Job and a companion piece of a Supplicant Persephone were exhibited at Mestrovic's one-man exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1947 (the first such show the Met had ever mounted for a living artist).  Today, the works face each other across a small courtyard at Syracuse University, where I pass them almost every day.  Both these works are presided over by a larger relief of Moses, a bronze made in 1990 from Mestrovic's plaster version designed for the un-built monument to the Six Million designed by architect Erich Mendelsohn, which was planned for Riverside Park in New York City but never built (more on that work in a future post).

Syracuse, NY. Job by Ivan Mestrovic (1945) in the Shaffer Sculpture Court outside of Bowne Hall. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012.

Versions of Job and Persephone from the Ivan Meštrović Museums in Croatia were both installed in the Court of Honor at the Musee Rodin, as part of small but powerful exhibition of Mestrovic's work  coinciding with festival Croatie, la voici. 

Syracuse, NY. Supplicant Persephone by Ivan Mestrovic (1945) in the Shaffer Sculpture Court outside of Bowne Hall. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2012. 

In Syracuse these works are among the very best figurative sculptures in a city that boasts an impressive collection of public bronzes. I teach these works in my Holocaust, Memory and the Visual Arts class.  In Paris, however, despite that fact that I was in the midst of exploring the city's commemorative landscape, these works took on - in the context of Rodin's work - a different, but related, meaning.  The anguish expressed by both figures was still powerful, but due to their museum siting it was dissipated.

On the other hand, since the works were in only a stone's throw from Rodin's great group of suffering figures, the Burghers of Calais (Les Bourgeois de Calais), and also of bronzes of all the constituent figures in the that work (the work has been cast twelve times in all, and can be seen in various configurations in different cities), the line from Rodin to Mestrovic was very clear.  The mix of defeat, anguish, anxiety in the posture and gestures of the Burghers of Calais figures, laid over expressions of nobility, made this an exceptional public monument when it was unveiled in 1889 and still today. As with Mestrovic's Job, Rodin's work has inspired any number of subsequent commemorative depictions of victims - especially Holocaust victims.

Paris, France. Musee Rodin.  The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber 2013.

Both the preliminary designs for Job and Persephone express Mestrovic's personal anguish as a prisoner in 1941, when he expected death at the hand of Italian Fascists.  His political stances from the First Wold War period (in defiance of both Austria and Italy) and his refusal in the mid-1930s to accept a Nazi invitation to exhibit his work in Berlin, which Hitler himself would open, made him a persona non grata in occupied Yugoslavia.  Subsequently, these works as executed in bronze have been accepted as larger expressions of pain, remorse and despair in the wake of all the destitution in Europe brought about in World War II.   Mestrovic's first wife Ruza was Jewish and she died in Zagreb in 1942 and at least 30 members of her extended family also died in the Holocaust.  But Mestrovic knew many people - Jews and Christians - in artistic, political and others circles who suffered and died in the war.

Not surprisingly, Mestrovic was not the only artist of the time to use Job as a symbol of the suffering during the war.  Coincidentally, probably the best known painting of the theme, Francis Gruber's Job of 1944 from the Tate Galley in London, is also on view in Paris in the important - though rambling - exhibition L'Art en Guerre: France 1938-1947 on view at the Musée d’Art Moderne (through February 17, 2013).  Gruber (no relation to me) painted his Job for the Salon d'Automne (the so-called Salon of the Liberation) of 1944,  just after the Liberation of Paris.   Gruber's Job is a naked, forlorn and vulnerable man seated on a stool by a broken gate or fence.  According to the Tate online catalogue "Gruber painted this picture ... to symbolise the oppressed peoples who, like Job, had undergone a great ordeal of suffering. The inscription on the paper at which the figure is looking reads: 'Maintenant encore, ma plainte est une révolte, et pourtant ma main comprime mes soupirs'. This is taken from The Book of Job, 23.11"   This Job is essentially passive - there is none of the animal anguish Mestrovic brings to the subject. 

It is significant that Gruber and Mestrovic both chose the figure of Job to channel their fears and faith about World War II and its aftermath.  For Jews and Christians alike, Job was the Biblical figure who embodied universalism.  Rabbis debated who he was, when he lived of if he was real at all.  Many saw him as the archetype Righteous Gentile, others a fictional device for teaching the love and fear of God.   Still, both Jews and Gentiles took him for their own, and his suffering represents the suffering (and hope) of all.  For Christian artists especially Job was an appropriate subject, that could linked to Jewish tradition (and contemporary suffering), but could also be interpreted in many other ways.

Job by Francis Gruber (1912-1948). Tate Museum, London. Photo: Courtesy of the Tate Museum

How did Job and Persephone get to Syracuse?  Mestrovic was born in Croatia in 1883 but by the 1920s he was very popular in the United States, where he had a successful exhibition at Brooklyn Museum in New York in 1924, which led to his commission for giant Indians (Bowman and Spearman) in Chicago,  installed in Grant Park in 1928.  In 1947 Syracuse University Chancellor William P. Tolley arranged for Mestrovic to come and teach at Syracuse University, where he stayed until 1955 before moving on to Notre Dame, where he taught until his death in 1962.  He brought many of his recent and in progress works to Syracuse, where he worked on them, and trained a generation of young sculptors. You can read about Mestrovic at Syracuse here, and in a longer article by David Tatum here.  Notre Dame hold a large collection of Mestrovic papers, the finding aid is here.

George Washington in Paris

Paris, France. George Washington Equestrian Statue at Place d'Iéna by Daniel Chester French (1900). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (Dec. 2012)

George Washington in Paris
by Samuel D. Gruber


I came to Paris and saw old friends - people and monuments.  Americans are common, in flesh and bronze, and their comings and goings over two hundred years can often be traced in the many commemorative plaques one finds attached to buildings walls, and in a series of monumental statues placed around the city, but especially in the 16th arrondissement. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin are fixtures in the neighborhood.

Paris, France. George Washington Equestrian Statue at Place d'Iéna by Daniel Chester French (1900). Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (Dec. 2012)

George Washington never came to Paris in his lifetime, but he is here bigger than life dominating two public spaces, and his image can probably be found elsewhere throughout the city.  Once (at the Place d'Iéna) he is carried on a feisty horse, and once (at the Place du Etats-Unis) he carries, together with his bon ami and protege Lafayette the banners of liberty the flags of the United States and France.

Both works are by sculptors well-known to Americans.  The bronze Equestrian Statue of a very marshal George Washington is by Daniel Chester French, known for his monumental Lincoln Memorial statue, and about whose Richard Morris Hunt monument I recently wrote.  The Washington statue was inaugurated July 3, 1900, the gift of a committee of American women. The text of the statue reads: "gift of the women of the United States of America in memory of the brotherly help given by France to their fathers in the fight for Independence."

 At the Place d'Iéna Washington raises his sword - presumably to advance into battle.  But mostly he combats of the thousands of cars that circle past every day.  Fortunately, horse and rider are raised on a high base, so Washington always rises above the fray. 

Paris, France. George Washington Equestrian Statue at Place d'Iéna by Daniel Chester French (1900). Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (Dec. 2012)

Washington and Lafayette are the work of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, creator (with Gustav Eiffel) of the Statue of Liberty.  Apparently newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer was so  impressed by Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty that he commissioned a statue symbolizing French-American friendship to be installed in Paris. It was dedicated in 1895 at the Place des États-Unis (a replica later erected in Manhattan's Morningside Park, New York).  

Here, Washington is in a quieter setting, set upon a green rectangle at one end of the Place des Etats-Unis.  In the center of the long narrow place is a playground, and several other monuments with American associations are place at other parts of the square.  The square is lined with impressive mansions.  Only a short distance from the much busier Place de l'étoile and the Arc de Triomphe. 

Paris, France. Washington and Lafayette Status by Bartholdi (1895). Photos: Samuel D. Gruber Dec. 2012)

Paris also has a Rue Washington that connects with the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.  It was named after the  American general and president in 1889.