Fire & Ice
In winter, this statue of Prometheus sits above a fountain and overlooks the ice skating rink. At Christmas time, a magnificent Christmas tree stands above the statue. Prometheus, a 1934 gilded cast bronze sculpture by Paul Manship, is located above the lower plaza at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Manship chose to show Prometheus bringing fire to mortals. A torch waving in one hand, Prometheus is poised between heaven (symbolized by a cloud and a ring with signs of the zodiac) and earth (the mountains below). He is not looking warily upward for an angry Zeus, but down, at the humans on earth.
When a sculptor represents a figure as multi-faceted as Prometheus, he has a wide range of possible themes. According to Greek myth, Prometheus formed humans out of clay and water. He gave them sense and understanding, then taught them to work wood and make bricks, to build shelters, to use the stars to tell the seasons for planting, to write, to do math, to harness beasts of burden and to build ships. Prometheus also gave humans the gift of fire, smuggling it from Mount Olympus inside a hollow reed. But Zeus had forbidden anyone to give humans fire, and he ordered Prometheus to be chained to a rock in the distant Caucasus Mountains. Every day, an eagle came to rip out Prometheus’s liver. Every night his liver grew back, so the torture could begin anew.
An artwork with Prometheus as subject could show the importance of thinking, being creative, being independent. It could show the risks of rebellion or the nobility of suffering for the sake of others. It could show sparkling intelligence or intolerable, eternal agony.
diannedurantewriter.com/archives/4080
Fire & Ice
In winter, this statue of Prometheus sits above a fountain and overlooks the ice skating rink. At Christmas time, a magnificent Christmas tree stands above the statue. Prometheus, a 1934 gilded cast bronze sculpture by Paul Manship, is located above the lower plaza at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Manship chose to show Prometheus bringing fire to mortals. A torch waving in one hand, Prometheus is poised between heaven (symbolized by a cloud and a ring with signs of the zodiac) and earth (the mountains below). He is not looking warily upward for an angry Zeus, but down, at the humans on earth.
When a sculptor represents a figure as multi-faceted as Prometheus, he has a wide range of possible themes. According to Greek myth, Prometheus formed humans out of clay and water. He gave them sense and understanding, then taught them to work wood and make bricks, to build shelters, to use the stars to tell the seasons for planting, to write, to do math, to harness beasts of burden and to build ships. Prometheus also gave humans the gift of fire, smuggling it from Mount Olympus inside a hollow reed. But Zeus had forbidden anyone to give humans fire, and he ordered Prometheus to be chained to a rock in the distant Caucasus Mountains. Every day, an eagle came to rip out Prometheus’s liver. Every night his liver grew back, so the torture could begin anew.
An artwork with Prometheus as subject could show the importance of thinking, being creative, being independent. It could show the risks of rebellion or the nobility of suffering for the sake of others. It could show sparkling intelligence or intolerable, eternal agony.
diannedurantewriter.com/archives/4080