Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. This episode features a lot of discussion about statues,
Speaker 1: which are things that you can famously see but not here.
Speaker 1: Uh So, we have an image gallery on our substack
Speaker 1: and our Instagram page. If you want to take a
Speaker 1: look and follow along, you can just hit the links
Speaker 1: in our show notes below. All Right, onto the show.
Speaker 2: I'm Anny, I'm Noah.
Speaker 1: This is Devin and this is no such thing. The
Speaker 1: show where we settle ourdam arguments and yours by actually
Speaker 1: doing the research on this week's episode, Why do new
Speaker 1: statues look so bad?
Speaker 2: No, there's no no such thing, no such thank no touch,
Speaker 2: thank touch, thank no touch thank.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Here's a topic that comes up every few months. There
Speaker 1: will be an unveiling of a new sculpture celebrating an
Speaker 1: iconic historical figure politician, entertainer, often an athlete recently, and
Speaker 1: the statue just look horrible. It might look like a person,
Speaker 1: but not that person. Proportions are off or even just
Speaker 1: like it's kind of close but just strange.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's tough because we all these are very
Speaker 3: famous people. That's the bible we really know. We see
Speaker 3: all the time, pretty recognizable exactly.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, on the screen here our listeners can't
Speaker 1: see it, but of course there'll be on our newsletter.
Speaker 1: Probably the most infamous one in recent memory, even though
Speaker 1: it's from twenty seventeen, is the statue that we're looking
Speaker 1: at of soccer star Christiano Ronaldo.
Speaker 3: A very handsome man in real life, a real chad, yes,
Speaker 3: And it was unveiled at Madeira Airport in Santa Cruz
Speaker 3: when the airport was officially renamed.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this part. It's the Christiano Ronaldo international level,
Speaker 1: so it's a pretty big deal. It was like, all right,
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's a legend.
Speaker 3: Let's have a.
Speaker 2: Lot of there's a Ronaldo Airport, but there's not a
Speaker 2: messy airport.
Speaker 3: You're going through the trouble of renaming the airport, and
Speaker 3: then this is the statue that you make of so
Speaker 3: very attracted His statue is one of the ugliest people
Speaker 3: I've ever Just.
Speaker 2: To make it clear for people who maybe don't watch
Speaker 2: soccer Christiano Ronaldo. I think a lot of people consider
Speaker 2: him one of the most attractive men on earth, and
Speaker 2: then we've got this statue that kind of looks like
Speaker 2: he's like sick. I think like he's got like something's wrong.
Speaker 2: With him and he's fighting through it. He's like smiling through.
Speaker 1: The so just from neckup. Yeah, you know, a full
Speaker 1: body here.
Speaker 3: What's the Danny Boyle movie with the drug addicts train Spotting?
Speaker 3: Train spot He looks like one of the dudes from
Speaker 3: train Spotting And yeah, like he was just on a bender,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe he's gone through something withdrawal.
Speaker 1: To me, it's like his eyes are slightly different size
Speaker 1: in there, kind of slanted and then his mouth is
Speaker 1: slanted in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they've introduced like wrinkles in the statue, like very
Speaker 2: natural wrinkles when you when you make faces, that happens.
Speaker 2: But they just look so bad here. And what always
Speaker 2: gets me about these statues is like, I guess humans
Speaker 2: have been making realistic statues for thousands of years, right,
Speaker 2: I don't understand why in the in the past like
Speaker 2: twenty years, we've just simply cannot come up with a
Speaker 2: good bust of someone.
Speaker 1: So this statue here has had a bit of a saga.
Speaker 1: It was made by a sculptor, Emmanuel Santos.
Speaker 2: Doing disservice to the name and yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you need to talk to your boy. So
Speaker 1: everyone hated the statue kind of immediately as a total joke.
Speaker 1: He was quoted by the BBC as saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: making one of these is not as simple as it seems,
Speaker 1: and it's a matter of.
Speaker 3: Taste, a matter of taste.
Speaker 1: And then he also said it is impossible to please
Speaker 1: the Greeks and Trojans. Neither did Jesus please everyone.
Speaker 2: He's comparing himself to Jesus.
Speaker 3: You know what, I kind of respect that, you know statue,
Speaker 3: the trials and tribulations of Jesus Christ. You know, I'll
Speaker 3: respect that. Do a bad job, and then be like,
Speaker 3: well they also hated Jesus, you know who else was disrespected.
Speaker 1: He did make a replacement that went up the following year.
Speaker 3: This one looks more like a person. That one looks
Speaker 3: like a cartoon almost. The new one just seems more simplistic.
Speaker 1: The new version is like a passport photo.
Speaker 3: Yes right, Yeah, it's a little bit more generic, but
Speaker 3: I think in a good way. Yeah, or like it's safer, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it feels safer. It's a good way. Put it so.
Speaker 1: And there's a few more, and we'll talk about these later.
Speaker 1: There was Martin Luther King in Winter Park, Florida, NBA's
Speaker 1: Dwayne Wade outside the Mines.
Speaker 3: That one is incredible because the meme of his son
Speaker 3: giving him just like looking at him like, all right,
Speaker 3: that's your statue.
Speaker 2: And he basically had to pretend to like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he's quoted by ESPN, he said, is Dwayne Wade.
Speaker 2: If I wanted to look like me, I'll just stand
Speaker 2: outside the arena, y'all and take photos. You don't need
Speaker 2: to look like me. It's an artistic version of a
Speaker 2: moment that happened that we're trying to cement.
Speaker 3: So we'll get into that one later, all right, don't
Speaker 3: need to look like me about a statue.
Speaker 1: He's being very nice.
Speaker 2: I think he's defending the artist.
Speaker 1: Maybe. I'm sure it was just a debacle.
Speaker 2: And I'm personally invested in them getting this right because,
Speaker 2: as much as I don't like to admit it, in
Speaker 2: a few years, Lebron James is gonna retire. They're gonna
Speaker 2: have to make a bust or a statue of him,
Speaker 2: and if it's bad, I might fucking act out. But
Speaker 2: they need to sort this out as soon as possible,
Speaker 2: and I want to see it through.
Speaker 1: Only Yeah, only for Lebron.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking here, Like why these
Speaker 2: end up being so ugly so often is that sense
Speaker 2: of a sculptor's artistic take on what the person looks like,
Speaker 2: which is what Dwayne Wade was saying, which I kind
Speaker 2: of agree with, which is like, if I'm commissioned to
Speaker 2: make a statue of Noah, like we know what Noah
Speaker 2: looks like, I might want to do something different with it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, shange it up.
Speaker 2: I think what they need to understand, I think, at
Speaker 2: least for these athletes, is that we just want it
Speaker 2: to look exactly like it should be photo realistic, and
Speaker 2: that's going to make us happy. The masses don't need
Speaker 2: a you know, yeah, we don't need an artistic take
Speaker 2: on what no it looks like.
Speaker 3: See here's my issue with that. Okay, I'm okay with
Speaker 3: them taking artistic licenses, but make it look good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know. It's like what ends up happening is it
Speaker 3: seems like they're just doing a bad job of like
Speaker 3: making a photo realistic version of a person. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm just it's my interpretation. It's like, no, if you're
Speaker 3: going to have a style, go for it. Make it
Speaker 3: look completely different.
Speaker 1: Because this doesn't look so different. It's not like a
Speaker 1: full cartoon or exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, this is just like supposed to Yes.
Speaker 3: I know you mentioned Martin Luther King and Florida. I
Speaker 3: guess the MLK and DC is maybe a bit more
Speaker 3: of like it's more of like an abstract take on it.
Speaker 3: So I give a little bit more leeway to something
Speaker 3: like that. But most of the feels like they're trying
Speaker 3: to do the photo realistic thing and then feeling and
Speaker 3: then being like, well, it was supposed to look bad.
Speaker 3: That's my style. My styles, I make bad looking statues.
Speaker 2: You know they hated Jesus too. That's the best excuse
Speaker 2: I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Of my little It's also said because like you know,
Speaker 1: we're not massive you know, contemporary sculpture heads. No, So
Speaker 1: it's like all we know from this man now is this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by far gonna be the most seen statue that guy
Speaker 1: ever makes.
Speaker 3: Yep, But you know, give me, like do a cause,
Speaker 3: you know, give me. I hate to cause stuff at
Speaker 3: this point now, but like you know, you know, do
Speaker 3: that sort of thing where it's like, hey, it is Ronaldo,
Speaker 3: but it's.
Speaker 1: Just like costs Yeah, he's doing what he wants.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly like if you if they were to do that,
Speaker 3: I'd be like, you know what, that's that's their take on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think like for a portrait, a painted portrait,
Speaker 1: we're a lot more forgiving of that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: just because there's a little bit more to play with it,
Speaker 1: or like we're just more used to that. So I
Speaker 1: want to find out why are these statues so bad?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: That d Wade quote had me wondering, like are we
Speaker 1: being unfair just because we do know these people?
Speaker 3: Like you go to the.
Speaker 1: Met there's all these beautiful statues, but they are like
Speaker 1: mythical characters or something. They're not people that we actually
Speaker 1: know or we know them by their statues.
Speaker 3: Yes, not like introduction.
Speaker 1: We haven't watched you know, thousands and thousands of hours
Speaker 1: of this guy running around. Yeah you know. And then
Speaker 1: also just like should statues be like super realistic or
Speaker 1: should we be more up to more creative interpretations? And
Speaker 1: just generally like our sculptors getting worse, Like is this
Speaker 1: the lost art form? So after the break, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to someone who actually knows what they're talking about, a sculptor. Oh,
Speaker 1: so to understand why these public statues are so bad.
Speaker 1: I caught up John Ballardo. He's not only a sculptor himself,
Speaker 1: but he also teaches and serves as Lehman College's chief
Speaker 1: College Laboratory Technician for art, and he instructs out a
Speaker 1: few other art schools in the city. I mean, I
Speaker 1: looked at his stuff, and he does like proper sculptures
Speaker 1: of people. Things like that looked pretty good. Okay, he
Speaker 1: hasn't done any you know, athletes, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: So first I asked John to walk me through the
Speaker 1: history of portrait sculptures. How far back do they go
Speaker 1: and what's their original purpose.
Speaker 4: The idea of an individual portrait, a likeness of an
Speaker 4: individual is credited to the Romans, who it was part
Speaker 4: of a pagan culture that they were doing life casts
Speaker 4: or actually guest casts in wax of their family members,
Speaker 4: this kind of patriarchal system, and it was part of
Speaker 4: a ritual where they would pull these out during certain ceremonies,
Speaker 4: and then of course as the culture grew, they would
Speaker 4: take these deaths masks and actually carve them in marble.
Speaker 4: The idea there was that these were revered individuals, and
Speaker 4: so the likeness of them became very important, and that
Speaker 4: included all the realism, which means all the wrinkles in
Speaker 4: your face and everything that you can imagine in the
Speaker 4: age of the individual, rather than a youthful, beautiful appearance.
Speaker 4: So the idea of a death cast was the way
Speaker 4: we would record more objective information about the portrait over time.
Speaker 4: You know, you had those two things. You had, you know,
Speaker 4: either some sort of a casting or you would have
Speaker 4: the person directly in your studio. Michaelangelo famously never did
Speaker 4: a portrait.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: He you know, was asked many times, but he in
Speaker 4: some ways he refused. And so the idea of a portraiture,
Speaker 4: it's not always something that artists take on.
Speaker 1: John got to what might be the key issue for
Speaker 1: the modern sculptor, which we touched on earlier, is photography.
Speaker 4: Photography changed everything because now the public generally knows what
Speaker 4: the person looked like, you know, and that's important. Likeness
Speaker 4: and liveliness or the living person underneath are our similar ideas.
Speaker 4: But in a lot of ways, a person that you
Speaker 4: don't know what they look like, as long as it
Speaker 4: retained a certain liveliness, a certain naturalism, it didn't need
Speaker 4: to obviously look exactly like the person, because eventually that's
Speaker 4: what the person looked like and according to history. Obviously,
Speaker 4: now we're dealing with more objective record of their image.
Speaker 1: So there's something there to the fact that we actually
Speaker 1: just know what these people are because they're contemporary to us,
Speaker 1: so we've seen them in action and doing all this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Michelangelo obviously a great sculptor. I didn't know he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do any real portraits, which is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I love that my boy knew his limits.
Speaker 1: Yeah he I'll make an amazing David, but that's David. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no last name exactly.
Speaker 3: Don't ask me who he is. And maybe, you know,
Speaker 3: no disrespect to our boy Manuel. Maybe maybe he should
Speaker 3: have did the same, Maybe he should have opted out.
Speaker 3: Actually I can't really, that's not for me.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'll do a soccer player, Yes, an amazing
Speaker 1: handsome soccer player, but it's not necessarily not handsome.
Speaker 3: This one, the one he made, is not handsome handsome.
Speaker 3: I can make a really kind of ugly dude and
Speaker 3: may play soccer.
Speaker 1: Boss. I got that sculpture for your real ugly, weird looking.
Speaker 2: I wonder if Mike. The reason Michaelangelo refused to do
Speaker 2: them was because they it is something you can grade essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it kind of I'm gonna look more
Speaker 1: into that, but yeah, it seems like it where it's
Speaker 1: like because like I think most of his work was commissioned.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, whoever these families or whatever. But
Speaker 1: to just refuse to do that, it's like one leading
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of money on the table.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 2: And he used to say that the statues we know
Speaker 2: in love actually look like the people that they were
Speaker 2: supposed to look. Yeah, exactly, yeah, find us but yeah no, yeah.
Speaker 1: When when John said, you know, they look fine, because
Speaker 1: that's now what they look like, Yeah, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't mind blowing. And that's just how it was before,
Speaker 1: you know, basically whatever one hundred and fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: Well imagine if our boy David was actually like an
Speaker 3: ugly dude. Oh yeah, and he's like, damn, that's me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's just a really really rich, ugly y. He's like, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna treat you well. Just give me a nice sport,
Speaker 1: nice statue here. This is gonna last for.
Speaker 3: Like, don't look at me, look at that statue. That's
Speaker 3: what I look like at my soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's how John describes the process and considerations with
Speaker 1: a project like this.
Speaker 4: If it's from life, then the person really should be
Speaker 4: in the studio with you, but that's not always possible.
Speaker 4: So we often at this point work from photography, which
Speaker 4: is a blessing and a curse. So let's set up
Speaker 4: a space where we can start working from photography. In
Speaker 4: the case of many people that would deserve a portrait
Speaker 4: in the public, it would be something that there's a
Speaker 4: ton of photography over the course of many years, so
Speaker 4: you would have to be very careful about the photographs
Speaker 4: you are using, and certainly the more the better, but
Speaker 4: also an understanding of how those photographs were taken, from
Speaker 4: what distance, from what lighting source, and then whether or
Speaker 4: not you can trust the measurements from them. All portraiture
Speaker 4: or all likeness comes from proportions, believe it or not,
Speaker 4: like the distance between your eyes and compared to your
Speaker 4: size of your nose. But that's easy when you're doing
Speaker 4: a painted portrait because it's two dimensional. And not to
Speaker 4: say anything negative about painters, but sculpture is way more
Speaker 4: difficult because now we're talking about the depths of form
Speaker 4: rather not just heightened with and then from there you're
Speaker 4: relying on several things that hopefully you've educated yourself on.
Speaker 4: The first thing would be anatomy, what are the likely
Speaker 4: formations on the human head that arise from bone structure,
Speaker 4: muscle structure. And then you would also take information from
Speaker 4: your own memory and your own imagination in order to
Speaker 4: work from the portraits that you've done from life, so
Speaker 4: that the information has to be both empirical as well
Speaker 4: as rational, as well as just outside sources. And then
Speaker 4: it ultimately comes down to trial and error adding and
Speaker 4: subtracting clay. Something that people don't always consider is color.
Speaker 4: The color of your eyebrow, the color of your eyes,
Speaker 4: the color of your hair, the color of your pupils,
Speaker 4: and the color of your lips, everything, And so how
Speaker 4: do you do that with clay? That's one color? So
Speaker 4: you're usually dealing with what's called a color, that is
Speaker 4: this relief quality that has to do with the way
Speaker 4: light sweeps across a surface, gaining light and shadow in
Speaker 4: order to create this kind of black and white or
Speaker 4: gray scale structure across that and of course you have
Speaker 4: to be able to control that, even though you can't
Speaker 4: ever control the lighting in an outdoor where you need
Speaker 4: to be able to control it enough where those things
Speaker 4: aren't going to destroy it.
Speaker 2: It's a really interesting point about the color because I'm
Speaker 2: looking at the Ronaldo statue again, and I do wonder
Speaker 2: if it were like painted to look to be like
Speaker 2: his skin color and his lip color and his hair color,
Speaker 2: like how much more realistic it would look.
Speaker 1: And it being this dark bronze. And then I'm assuming
Speaker 1: this is probably camera flash, but also just even sunlight
Speaker 1: the way it reflects so strong, like these highlights are
Speaker 1: kind of glaring. Yeah, it doesn't do him any favors.
Speaker 2: It looks like it looks like Rinaldo did blackface or something.
Speaker 2: And then they made a statue of him, and just
Speaker 2: it just I wonder if it looked to put that on.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll cut that out. But it's just like
Speaker 2: such a weird it is. It's tough to kind of
Speaker 2: parse this out as a real human being when it's
Speaker 2: just bronze, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or even if it was like a like a
Speaker 1: classical marble or something, you know, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: he tells a good story about the Lincoln memorial, and
Speaker 1: once the statue was placed in the monument, the lighting
Speaker 1: was really off and like kind of spooky, like it
Speaker 1: was like under lighting him. And this is like, you know,
Speaker 1: the two artists, the sculptor and the architect, were like
Speaker 1: two legends of the game, like at the peak of
Speaker 1: their powers, and like even they messed that up and
Speaker 1: had to like they made some adjustments to the monument
Speaker 1: so the light would work better.
Speaker 2: But it's like, ultimately, there.
Speaker 1: Are so many different things, especially when it's gonna be outside,
Speaker 1: that I certainly hadn't really considered, even aside from just
Speaker 1: the difficulty of making a three D sculpture to.
Speaker 3: Begin with, Yeah, the environment is going to be in it,
Speaker 3: so important. Proportion really interesting when you think about photographs,
Speaker 3: you know, if you photograph one person in the same
Speaker 3: room with different lenses, Yeah, portly changed so dramatically. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that wasn't something I considered. You know when you're looking
Speaker 3: at these photographs, is that like, yeah, you may start
Speaker 3: with one proportion and then you got to realize, like, okay,
Speaker 3: you got to take kind of the averages of all
Speaker 3: these things, because you know, just the front facing proportion
Speaker 3: may not look the same from a point five versus
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: One thirty five or something wider. Your face is like
Speaker 2: way more pointed. Okay, yeah, but if it's the twenty
Speaker 2: four millimeters lens, it's like your face is way more flat. Yeap,
Speaker 2: that's like when the camera adds ten pounds espectually.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So after getting insight on kind of how hard it
Speaker 1: is to make a statue and what they're thinking about,
Speaker 1: I ask kind of the big question, our sculpture is
Speaker 1: getting worse or are we just more knowledgeable about what
Speaker 1: these subjects actually look like.
Speaker 4: It's the latter, we know these people more over time.
Speaker 4: There's a thousand things you're dealing with with a modern portrait.
Speaker 4: You know. The first thing is the recognizability of the person.
Speaker 4: We had talked earlier about photography, but now it's also
Speaker 4: video and particularly sports figures. They are recognizable in action, right,
Speaker 4: and so sculpture tends to be pretty static, right, So
Speaker 4: now we have to deal with that energy. And so
Speaker 4: how do you bring in energy into a portrait as
Speaker 4: well as a likeness as well as liveliness and hit
Speaker 4: it dead on? It is the sort of thing that
Speaker 4: humans are very sensitive to, very sensitive to recognizability. We
Speaker 4: can recognize our friends from down the street by the
Speaker 4: way they're walking. The other thing that happens is that
Speaker 4: art schools have not adequately trained sculptors over the past
Speaker 4: fifty years, and so a sculptor who goes through a
Speaker 4: normal education in America is not given any of the
Speaker 4: adequate training in anatomy and modeling, and a lot of
Speaker 4: artists don't realize that before they take on this very
Speaker 4: important responsibility. Artists nowadays are trained to express themselves and
Speaker 4: to be the center of attention, and to think of
Speaker 4: their work as ephemeral and yet freewheeling, where a sculpture,
Speaker 4: particularly of somebody as important as MLK, has to speak
Speaker 4: to the past before you were born you as an artist,
Speaker 4: and will retain its meaning after you're dead. So now
Speaker 4: we are talking about something very important, and it's now
Speaker 4: no longer about the artist. So the training of an
Speaker 4: artist just goes counter to that. The first thing that
Speaker 4: I saw with when I saw Ronaldo was maybe this
Speaker 4: artist was trained more as an anime or they draw
Speaker 4: on cartoons, you know, and that's unfortunately considered to be
Speaker 4: a good training for the things that they're asking to do.
Speaker 4: It needs to be about the individual you're portraying, and
Speaker 4: the most important thing you can do is show respect
Speaker 4: to that image. You're showing respect to what the public
Speaker 4: thinks of that individual, what that individual has represented, and
Speaker 4: the first thing they represented this image. So if you
Speaker 4: show respect to a likeness, then you're showing respect to
Speaker 4: what that person has done their entire career.
Speaker 1: One thing that really stuck out was kind of talking
Speaker 1: about the training where and it makes sense when you
Speaker 1: think about it. You say you really like painting, you
Speaker 1: go to school. It's the idea is like you're painting
Speaker 1: your own stuff, like whatever you want. And that's pretty
Speaker 1: different than you know, the days of Michelangelo or wherever
Speaker 1: where Okay, they're hired to paint the ceiling and then
Speaker 1: you do that, and that's it's not really about you.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's gonna be things you put in there right
Speaker 1: as a great artist or whatever. But so kind of
Speaker 1: in these situations, they're kind of trapped because you're you're
Speaker 1: trained to do your own thing, and now the expectations
Speaker 1: totally kind of flipped in a way. Even if you studied,
Speaker 1: you know, representation on all these things, so you know,
Speaker 1: you feel for these guys a little bit. That they
Speaker 1: maybe were set up a little bit out of there.
Speaker 1: So after that I ran a few of these sculptures
Speaker 1: by John. I want to go to the Duwayne Wade statue.
Speaker 1: Go to no such thing dot Show for the you
Speaker 1: know to see these images. So on the bottom left,
Speaker 1: that's the image that's being recreated. You see a you know,
Speaker 1: closer up detail of the statue there. Man, why don't
Speaker 1: you describe what's happening here in the original photo.
Speaker 2: In the original photo, I don't know. Dwayne Wade must
Speaker 2: have hit a three or something.
Speaker 3: They did.
Speaker 2: They did a good job doing something specific, and he's
Speaker 2: kind of he's amped up, he's yelling, he's hyping up
Speaker 2: the crowd, and so he's in a position that's like
Speaker 2: I think maybe he's doing a this is our house, yeah,
Speaker 2: something like he's pointing towards the ground saying, you know,
Speaker 2: this is our this is our spot, and in the
Speaker 2: statue you know it. For whatever reason, he they look
Speaker 2: like they just aged him by like thirty years, Like
Speaker 2: he just looks like a really old man. This may
Speaker 2: be the coloring sort of thing too, isn't helping because
Speaker 2: Dwayne Wade in this photo is relatively young. Like that
Speaker 2: was a long time ago. Yeah, he's probably late twenties
Speaker 2: or something in this photo and in the statue, I
Speaker 2: don't know. It just is like I don't understand the
Speaker 2: aging aspect here. They've also seemed to do like the
Speaker 2: statue version of his fade haircut, which yeah, a statue
Speaker 2: just makes it look like he only has like a
Speaker 2: tiny little bit of hair. It's tough to do a
Speaker 2: fade in like bronze or whatever.
Speaker 3: He looks like the zombies from Iron Legends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he looks so gaunt. I think, yes,
Speaker 1: and d Wade is like, you know, pretty good looking guy,
Speaker 1: but he had and he has like he.
Speaker 2: Has like cheeks, he's got like yeah.
Speaker 1: He's not chubby by any means obviously, but his face
Speaker 1: has like yes, I mean he looks good, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you can see a smile in the photo
Speaker 1: with the statue, It's like, yeah, it just looks pretty
Speaker 1: different than this man in the sculpture.
Speaker 2: Now, this is a This is an instance where with
Speaker 2: the Ronaldo statue you can tell that there was an
Speaker 2: attempt to make it look like Christiano Ronaldo and it
Speaker 2: just went wrong. This looks like a different person. This
Speaker 2: doesn't look similar to this.
Speaker 1: They're like, all right, here's the post we want and
Speaker 1: put him into Miami Jersey. Yeah, it doesn't really look
Speaker 1: like it's based on Wade, excepting the fact that he's
Speaker 1: a you know, athletically built and wearing Yeah yeah, but yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: if you just showed me that face, especially without Miami
Speaker 1: on the I wouldn't even think that's ay.
Speaker 2: It's like a civil rights what is happening here?
Speaker 4: So the Duyane Wade portrait, So not only do you
Speaker 4: have movement, you have energy, you have you know, you're
Speaker 4: trying to deal with likeness and the proportions, but now
Speaker 4: on top of it, expression with the mouth open. This
Speaker 4: is something that happens all the time. A commissioner or
Speaker 4: somebody who is paying for this will say, we want
Speaker 4: the individual to have this expression or we want it
Speaker 4: to be referring to this photograph. A smile is actually
Speaker 4: one of the most difficult things in the world to
Speaker 4: capture an expression like this, and he has this great,
Speaker 4: you know, grin and this excited yell. This is one
Speaker 4: moment in time. It's kind of like, you know, you
Speaker 4: take a bad candid photo and you know you have
Speaker 4: this weird expression on your face because you know you're
Speaker 4: in the middle of talking like this, and that doesn't
Speaker 4: look like you. But it's like this, this odd little shape,
Speaker 4: you know, And so that's I think what's happening here.
Speaker 4: A sculpture unfolds over time, so people interact with it
Speaker 4: as if they come up to it and they see
Speaker 4: it and they move past it, and now it's a
Speaker 4: it's a three dimensional image that that's exposed to the
Speaker 4: viewer over time. And to try to capture this snapshot
Speaker 4: instant of time and a sculpture is extraordinarily difficult. And
Speaker 4: so what's happening there is I think it has more
Speaker 4: to do with our of it, our perception, this juxtaposition,
Speaker 4: or this jarring experience of looking at this static sculpture
Speaker 4: with this highly energetic expression. I think that's really what
Speaker 4: it is. When his mouth is open, that changes the
Speaker 4: way he squints with his eyes, and so that's that's
Speaker 4: you're not going to recognize the person like that. You
Speaker 4: don't recognize people in that state, but you could recognize
Speaker 4: them if you saw them doing the jumping and excited dancing.
Speaker 4: But it's over time. It's not an instance. You know,
Speaker 4: we're always going to look awkward that way. I don't
Speaker 4: envy the you know, the artist, you know, I think
Speaker 4: in this case did an admirable job for an impossible cask.
Speaker 4: That's my opinion.
Speaker 2: These statues, you know, I think maybe they should start
Speaker 2: being closer to the classical portrait we're thinking of. So
Speaker 2: if you're gonna have a statue of an athlete outside
Speaker 2: of the stadium, maybe they really shouldn't be in in
Speaker 2: like some crazy position or like doing something in motion, because,
Speaker 2: like he was saying, you know, even when you look
Speaker 2: at the photo of Dwayne Wade, like we know through
Speaker 2: context clues and through just knowing his face that that's
Speaker 2: Dwayne Wade, but it doesn't like, quote unquote look like
Speaker 2: Dwayne Wade. Yeah, like he's he's like really scrunching his
Speaker 2: face up. If he wasn't in that jersey, if he
Speaker 2: wasn't if he was like on the street instead of
Speaker 2: in the basketball scenario, we might be like, who's this?
Speaker 2: Like I don't know exactly who that is.
Speaker 3: Right, We're not looking at a statue being like, oh,
Speaker 3: does this look like Dwayne Wade looked in that specifically
Speaker 3: doesn't not ye frame of that shot. It's like this
Speaker 3: this is like Dwayne Wade. Oh, and he's doing the
Speaker 3: motion from that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need to trust your own legacy that you know,
Speaker 1: you can just be be sat with a basketball I'm
Speaker 1: going on a yeah, but you know, with a Miami
Speaker 1: Heat jersey one. All right, so let's move away from athletes. Connor,
Speaker 1: would you mind pulling up one of the MLK photos.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've seen this all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's know this so well. Obviously, love great reverend,
Speaker 1: that's what are your what are your takeaways here?
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, like there's like a children's book.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: To me, the big thing is just his head.
Speaker 3: I mean proportion sizes.
Speaker 1: Aren't a particularly tall guy.
Speaker 2: No, you're sure.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure, you know, so they got the body
Speaker 1: size accurate. But his head is enormous and his.
Speaker 2: Hands ye huge. Sh Now, this is tough too, because
Speaker 2: back then they were wearing some big ass suits. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kind of hide what your body like?
Speaker 3: This looks like, uh if I was making an MLK
Speaker 3: like sports team and I needed a mascot for it,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like we were.
Speaker 1: R It does kind of look like a like a
Speaker 1: a kid in in elementary school. Drew Drew image of him,
Speaker 1: and then they're like, all right, we're gonna make a
Speaker 1: statue of yeah, we got off the photos anything.
Speaker 2: Which is why I wonder if it's supposed to look exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to look at the details of the face
Speaker 1: to see doesn't look like, yeah, it looks like a guy.
Speaker 1: It looks like a man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like a man. Like it looks like
Speaker 3: a black man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no mistake there.
Speaker 3: The hair looks pretty good on this one, actually, yeah. True,
Speaker 3: he looks like a kid in his face, like his
Speaker 3: church clothes.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But what is fascinating about this is that every different
Speaker 2: photo looks like a completely different set.
Speaker 1: Like his head looks enormous in this wearing another different angle,
Speaker 1: kind of slightly to the left, I suppose, really straight on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a caricature style.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and this one not you know, there's motion
Speaker 1: he's waving, but it's not like he's not it's not
Speaker 1: celebrating a buzzer beater that would be.
Speaker 3: It's not like, oh, you know, you know, I'm okay,
Speaker 3: I was, I was doing that waving his hand.
Speaker 1: It's like he's most famous for, you know, walking, you know.
Speaker 2: Stand walking very long distance. This.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is like a town assemblymen. Yes, no
Speaker 1: offense to the greatest symbol. It's in winter Park, Florida.
Speaker 3: Okay, it feels like Martin Luther King's statue in Winnipark, Florida.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know this.
Speaker 3: Is in the DC. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like, all right,
Speaker 3: you've got a local artist in Winnipark like this.
Speaker 2: The other weird thing with the Florida statue of Martin
Speaker 2: Luther King, And this is very similar to the Dwayne
Speaker 2: Wade one in that they just aged him. Yeah, Martin
Speaker 2: Luther King Ray. Well, a lot of people might not recall,
Speaker 2: but he died very young. He's in his thirties when
Speaker 2: he was killed. And so this guy in this statue
Speaker 2: looks like he's seventy.
Speaker 3: Everybody looks like their father thirty nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think late thirties. But yeah, still, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a very young person.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm about to be looks as we discussed people
Speaker 3: used to look older.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I was thinking.
Speaker 3: I was like, but not that, damn.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe it's in our head that just
Speaker 1: like statues are old people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 1: Probably a little bit bronze's but like, yeah, the Ronado
Speaker 1: one didn't look that old, you know, no like relative,
Speaker 1: you know, just as another comparison point.
Speaker 2: And I know there's the famous one in d C
Speaker 2: which I got to see a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: which does look just like him. But this is an interesting,
Speaker 2: very interesting statue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the DC one's cool. Well, that one's like I
Speaker 1: can't remember the word, but when it's like coming out
Speaker 1: of the block.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's coming out of the slab.
Speaker 1: I think his face looks much more accurate in this one,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: And the DC one yeah, yeah, this.
Speaker 2: Was like the official Yeah, and that's.
Speaker 3: More if we want to do some artistic that's the
Speaker 3: way to do it, right, Like, it still looks like
Speaker 3: the person, but it's not just a straight statue. He's
Speaker 3: coming out and let work. Yeah, yeah, you don't out
Speaker 3: of slab.
Speaker 1: Forget the back.
Speaker 3: Not sure that's what he was thinking of.
Speaker 2: They got you ran up to the deadline. Actually it's
Speaker 2: supposed to look like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wasn't supposed to finish the back to there
Speaker 3: knocking on the door. I feel like that one got
Speaker 3: some criticism when it first came out too, though, Yeah,
Speaker 3: probably I like this one. Yeah, I think it does
Speaker 3: a great job. I feel like, yeah, the artist being
Speaker 3: able to add their little touch to it, but also
Speaker 3: representing the person well, looks like the person serving the
Speaker 3: purpose of the statue, which is not that like, Oh,
Speaker 3: this guy's just such a great sculptor, it's supposed to
Speaker 3: look like them.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: The first thing I noticed about the Winter Park MLK
Speaker 4: is that it is out of proportion. Now I'm only
Speaker 4: looking at it from photographs and video, but it appeared
Speaker 4: that the head was too large. That's the first thing.
Speaker 4: Proportions in a very large statue outdoors is something that
Speaker 4: a sculptor needs to be able to control. Sometimes we
Speaker 4: might make the head slightly smaller because of the way
Speaker 4: we might be looking up at the statue. Other times,
Speaker 4: you know you were going to change the proportions in
Speaker 4: different ways in order to again because of the way
Speaker 4: you might interact with that's a sculpture. How big is
Speaker 4: it in compared to the viewer? How big is it
Speaker 4: in compared with architecture? The likeness itself, for me, it
Speaker 4: doesn't look like an Okay, ultimately in likeness you're talking
Speaker 4: about millimeters, But when you enlarge something sometimes those distortions
Speaker 4: can feel exaggerated. So when you're talking about the proportions
Speaker 4: of a likeness and then the scale of your proportions,
Speaker 4: now you're going up and it's getting bigger and it's outside.
Speaker 4: That's a terribly difficult thing to control. But it is
Speaker 4: the responsibility of the sculptor.
Speaker 3: I do wonder seeing some of this stuff, especially looking
Speaker 3: at a Martin Luther King thing. Right, this guy makes
Speaker 3: this thing, he puts it all together and he sets
Speaker 3: back and he's like, God, damn it that head is. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do they ever just start over, you know, like damn
Speaker 3: you know, like I mean, well you're making it portrait.
Speaker 3: You just get a new piece of paper and you know,
Speaker 3: start sketching the game.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it depends on the material, and I imagine
Speaker 1: like the budgets and all these things, but it's like
Speaker 1: you're either then adding clay or whatever back on or
Speaker 1: chipping away. It's like, all right, so now you have
Speaker 1: this giant, mkay head. Now you need to chip away
Speaker 1: the entire thing and keep it in proportion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because then you'd have to if you made his
Speaker 2: head smaller, you would have to go back and make
Speaker 2: his eyes and his nose.
Speaker 1: And then you make it too small, then you need
Speaker 1: to chop off the whole bot. You know.
Speaker 3: It feels like a lot of time these guys are
Speaker 3: just like, oh bad first attempt, you know, like, oh damn,
Speaker 3: you know, you try something that's not quite it. But
Speaker 3: if I did it again, yeah, I could get a
Speaker 3: little bit closer. Yeah, And it feels like they just
Speaker 3: don't get another shot, you know, they get the one
Speaker 3: shot and it's just not right.
Speaker 1: They need they need to put them on way longer time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Feel like like when you invite people over for a
Speaker 1: party or something and you give them, you know, two
Speaker 1: hours early, knowing no one's going to be there exactly.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, so you do that first version. Not great,
Speaker 3: you got another couple of months to get it together.
Speaker 1: So having learned all this, and John said, you know
Speaker 1: several times, like he doesn't envy any of these artists
Speaker 1: who have to do this, Yeah.
Speaker 2: What I've learned is that it's a much more impossible
Speaker 2: task than I had originally thought. Not not an impossible one,
Speaker 2: but just like there's so many it's such an uphill
Speaker 2: battle to make like an accurate statue. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: just want to again make sure that the people who
Speaker 2: end up being in charge of the Lebron James Statue.
Speaker 1: To listen to this episode, so try to get on
Speaker 1: the committee. I'm going to start making sure I don't
Speaker 1: ever smile just for you know, for the artists down
Speaker 1: the line when they're doing the NST. Yeah, you know statue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I definitely have deep respect for any sculptor of any
Speaker 1: capacity who's done any of these. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: given me more to consider when I am looking at these,
Speaker 1: especially just simple stuff like the lighting and how much
Speaker 1: that that can affect how you take these in. And
Speaker 1: the biggest thing to me think like you're just interesting
Speaker 1: to think about the history of it, where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I actually don't know what any of these old
Speaker 1: statues look like, or like even like someone slightly more recent,
Speaker 1: but like pre photography. It's like someone like Napoleon or something.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, there's plenty of paintings too, so
Speaker 1: like you're basing that and then whatever sculpture it's like,
Speaker 1: but it's still like those are fake images, just like
Speaker 1: make up this person in our head, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the final thing they'll need to
Speaker 2: consider is like making a flattering image of the person
Speaker 2: instead of something that's one hundred percent supposed to be look,
Speaker 2: you know, one to one realistic, something that you know,
Speaker 2: gives you something to look at that is flattering of
Speaker 2: the subject.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and feels represented. I feel like we gotta somebody's
Speaker 3: gotta change our expectations, right, We got to stop asking
Speaker 3: them to make statues of very specific moments in time, right,
Speaker 3: Like it just needs to be like, okay, make it
Speaker 3: look like this person. And I feel like the artists
Speaker 3: need to just understand, Hey, we're not here.
Speaker 1: It's not about you.
Speaker 3: We're not here to see your work. Yeah, We're here
Speaker 3: to see a representation of this person.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to understand you put your personal style
Speaker 3: to the side unless you know you're going to do
Speaker 3: something like the like I said, the MLK and DC
Speaker 3: pretty good combination of those two. This guy doing a
Speaker 3: Ronaldo like like, like I boy said, I don't know
Speaker 3: if he's doing anime drawings or whatever the hell he
Speaker 3: was trying to do with the statue. We don't want
Speaker 3: the statue to look like an anime draw.
Speaker 1: Soon, all these statues are gonna look like damn laboo boos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these statues were really meant to walk up to
Speaker 2: them and be like, that's yep, that's Lebron James.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's essentially. We want a photograph. Yeah, a three
Speaker 1: D photograph made of one color. I mean, good luck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: good luck. Any sculptors are listening in wanna make a
Speaker 1: free sculpture of us? Shoot us an email.
Speaker 3: We won't be too harsh. He's He's helsay Hewsay Hews.
Speaker 1: No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope content. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Kate Osborne and Mangesh hot To Cadur.
Speaker 1: The show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and
Speaker 1: Devin Joseph Them and credits song by Manny. Mixing is
Speaker 1: by Steve Bone, our guest this week with sculptor John Billardo.
Speaker 1: You can visit www dot No such thing dot show
Speaker 1: to subscribe to our newsletter, where you can find images
Speaker 1: of all the sculptures discussed in this episode, and if
Speaker 1: you have feedback for us or a question, our email
Speaker 1: is Manny Noah Devin at gmail dot com, or if
Speaker 1: you're in the US, you can also leave us a
Speaker 1: voicemail by calling the number in our show notes. We'll
Speaker 1: be back next week with a new episode. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: Hell's hell's, hell's ayes, Hell's no such thing.