Returning Swords and other weapons to public art statues. Perhaps they will fix the genatailaia in Rome

Swords Return to Public Statues as City Crime Drops

By James Fanelli on June 23, 2014 6:45am 

@fanellijames

Slideshow

General Gouverneur Kemble Warren

PARK SLOPE — A keen-eyed observer studying the statue of General Gouverneur Kemble Warren at Grand Army Plaza may notice something is off about the Civil War hero’s pose.
Dressed in full military regalia and grasping field binoculars in his left hand, an 8-foot-tall Warren leans ever so slightly toward his right hand, which lies waist high, cupping empty space.
“It's funny that people might not notice, but then you check and say, ‘What was he holding in his hand?’” said Jonathan Kuhn, the director of Arts and Antiquities at the city Parks Department.
What’s missing from the bronze statue is Warren’s dress sword.
The general gripped the sword in his right hand when the statue was dedicated in 1896. But, like other weapons on public sculptures around the city, it disappeared.
Kuhn said city officials first noticed in the 1960s that Warren’s sword had vanished. They never replaced it — partly because in those high-crime days, they feared the substitute would be stolen as well.
www.bigbronze.com and www.allclassics.com 
But the Parks Department is no longer on edge about statue's swords — the agency has plans to make a replica sword for the sculpture and hopes to replace the missing bronze sword in the statue of Gen. Josiah Porter in Van Cortlandt Park.
City officials first noticed in 1971 that Porter’s weapon had also disappeared, Kuhn said.
Re-arming the two sculptures is part of the agency’s full-throttle preservation push, which began a quarter-century ago. It comes now because New York City crime has dropped dramatically, allaying fears that vandals or enterprising thieves will make off with the pieces of art, Kuhn said.
“Through improved policing and improved park management, crime in the city over the past two decades is generally down, park usage is up and theft has diminished,” he told DNAinfo New York last week.
In the past 14 years, the Parks Department has restored weapons to three public sculptures.
Officials returned a sword in 2000 to the statue of Gen. Franz Sigel sitting on a horse in Riverside Park. The sword fell from Sigel’s left hip in 1941 and a police officer retrieved it, Kuhn said. It was placed into storage out of fear of theft.

The Parks Department has plans to make a replica sword to put back in the hand of the sculpture of Gen. Josiah Porter in Van Cortlandt Park. The statue, erected in 1902, originally had a sword, but the weapon disappeared around 1971.

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About a dozen years ago, the Parks Department replaced a sword that had gone missing from the statue of Adm. David Glasgow Farragut in Madison Park. And in 2005, the agency replaced a missing sword on the statue of Gen. Edward Fowler in Fort Greene.
The Parks Department is also developing a plan to return a sculpture of the Highbridge Doughboy to University Heights. The sculpture has been in storage since the mid-1970s, when vandals badly damaged it and stole its bayonet.
The city’s Design Commission approved the Parks Department’s proposal for the Warren and Porter sculptures last week.
Now, Kuhn is trying to raise money to make the replicas of the swords. He estimates that creating casts of the weapons will each cost between $3,000 and $5,000.
He and his team of conservators have already decided on a design for both. The Museum of the City of New York has Porter’s actual dress sword, allowing them to make a rubber mold of it.
As the first Harvard College graduate to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War, Porter commanded the 22nd Regiment of the National Guard, which conducted field exercises in Van Cortlandt Park.
The mold of Porter’s sword will double as Warren’s, since research showed the two generals carried similar weapons.
Kuhn noted that no weapons have been stolen from Parks Department sculptures in 40 years. His team plans to refasten the swords using welding and screws.
“I think we've improved our level of care. I also think the city is a safer place,” he said.
Kuhn has worked for the Parks Department for 27 years, helping to oversee the restoration of more than 800 monuments.
The Herculean effort has paid off, he said, leaving 95 percent of the agency's monuments and sculptures in good shape.
“We’re now at the point where we can focus on these kinds of details,” Kuhn said of the swords. “We're trying to make them whole again.”
 http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140623/park-slope/parks-dept-restores-swords-public-statues-as-city-crime-drops

 Rooftop Sculpture Installation Canceled After Suicide

Antony Gormley’s “Event Horizon” in London, 2007 (photo by Flickr user Little Blue Penguin)

When Antony Gormley’s “Event Horizon,” a series of 30 life-size fiberglass sculptures cast from the artist’s body, were first installed on rooftops around the city of London in 2007, people mistook them for suicide jumpers and called the police. Now, a presentation of “Event Horizon” in Hong Kong has been canceled because of a real suicide, The Art Newspaper reported.

In February, Dennis Li Junjie, a junior employee of JP Morgan in Hong Kong, leapt to his death from the top of the 30-story skyscraper in which the firm is based. “The pressure of work was a possible motive,” according to the Daily Mail. JP Morgan’s landlord, the company Hong Kong Land, was the sponsor of the upcoming “Event Horizon” installation; in light of the suicide, the bank asked Hong Kong Land to withdraw its support, and the company acceded. Hong Kong Land told the BBC by email that “sponsorship decisions were ‘subject to different factors and criteria’, and that it would not comment on individual cases.”

“Event Horizon” in New York, 2010 (photo by Flickr user jerseygal2009) (click to enlarge)

Besides London, “Event Horizon” has been shown in New York, in 2010, and São Paulo, in 2012, resulting in emergency phone calls from concerned passersby every time. The display in Hong Kong was timed to coincide with Gormley’s first exhibition in the city-state, which ran March 28–May 3 at a branch of White Cube gallery. Gormley himself hasn’t given up hope that the work will be displayed there. Calling Hong Kong ”one of the major high density cities in the world,” the artist told The Art Newspaper, “Its combination of high-rise buildings in a context of mountains and sea make this an exciting proposition and we will continue to work with interested parties to bring Event Horizon to Hong Kong.”

“Event Horizon” in London, 2007 (photo by Dan Taylor, via Flickr)

He’s the newest addition to the Robert Morris University campus in Moon Township that’s named for him.

Created by All Classics Ltd, www.bigbronze.com, “Bronze Bob” is portrayed relaxing on a park bench, and it is hoped visitors will enjoy sitting with the man who is known to history as the financier of the American Revolution.

RMU President Greg Dell’Omo said he expects “Bronze Bob” to become a new university tradition.

“We wanted our new tradition to be something that invites everyone in the RMU family to be a part of it,” he said.

The statue clasps a rolled document in his right hand, symbolizing Morris’ status as one of only two Americans who signed all three of the country’s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

The statue was formally unveiled during a ceremony at 4:30 p.m. Monday, April 21st 2014 in the center of the campus.  Check out www.bronze-mascot.com to have your school mascot made.

Fisherman catches 2,500 year old bronze sculpture

A statue thought to be an ancient bronze of Apollo, Greek God of poetry and love, has dropped off the radar after being found in the sea off Gaza last summer and surfacing briefly on eBay. It is 2,500 years old and priceless.

Bronze sculptures last forever as they still dig up castings from the Roman era.  Many other materials would have fallen apart in the sea but not bronze.  This amazing work of art was listed on eBay some time ago with a price of $500,000.000 USD and then it disappeared.

Jawdat Abu Ghurab used to be a builder but in 2007 Israel restricted the delivery of building materials to the Gaza strip, so he became a fisherman like his father.
He only has a small boat so never goes out far, and catches only small fish. One day last August, though, the 29-year-old from Deir al-Balah ended up with a very different haul.
His uncle was also fishing that day, but gave up early. Ghurab kept going.
"I stayed alone in the sea with a small boat and paddle, I waited for hours and did not imagine what fate had in store for me in the depths of the sea," he says.

metimes waves move the bottom of the sea, small fish go to that spot in search of food, I saw the fish congregate in an area not far from the coast, only 100m out, so I rowed out there and, immersed in the sea, I saw the body of a person, half-buried under the sand."

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My wife covered her face when she saw him lying naked in the house - she begged me to cover it”

Jawdat Abu Ghurab

At first Ghurab was scared. He stared into the water but did not recognise the man's face. When he dived in and touched the body it felt like stone.

"I tried to move it, to make sure that it was a statue, but it was too heavy," he says. "The colour was golden so it was easy to think it was gold."
Ghurab marked the spot and went back to the beach to fetch his relatives. They returned and dived down together - it was at a depth of about four metres, Ghurab estimates.
"We were able to slide it under the water for a metre or two metres and then go up again to take a breath and try again," he says.
After four hours they succeeded in getting the object out of the water. It was the statue of a naked man. They loaded it on to a cart and took it to Ghurab's house.

"My wife covered her face when she saw him lying naked in the house. She begged me to cover it," he says, laughing.
Ghurab's uncle, Atef, proposed cutting the statue into small pieces and selling it.
"After I saw the yellow colour at the head of the statue I thought it was made of gold, but one of my sons suggested cutting off the finger and taking it to the market to check.
"We remembered that one of our relatives worked in the neighbourhood selling gold. We called him and he examined the statue and told us that it was made of bronze."
But he also said the bronze statue could be even more precious than if it had been made of gold.
Ghurab considered trying to smuggle the statue into Egypt to sell it, but the smugglers' tunnels - dug to circumvent restrictions put in place by Israel and Egypt after the Islamist movement Hamas came to power in Gaza - have been out of action since they were closed by the Egyptian army last summer.
Neighbours started asking questions, so Ghurab asked a relative - a commander in Hamas's military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades - to help him hide it.
"The people who took the statue said they would send me a handsome reward after they sell it, but we have not got anything yet," he says.

We are the largest designers, manufacturers and suppliers of monumental bronze sculptures, statuary and fountains in the world.  Our ability to create custom castings makes us a one stop shop for all of your large sculpture needs with no ego in our pricing.  Need a custom design for you home, school, university, business or organization? Contact us today as we can produce one piece to full production runs. www.allclassics.com, www.bigbronze.com

Never seen in public bronze sculpture now showing

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304181204579371464010790606
For those who are not $millionaires you can always shop at www.bigbronze.com and www.allclassics.com to find bargain hand crafted bronze sculpture. Many are artist exclusives designed and made by owner Darren Hussey.

Resplendent in Bronze

By

Barrymore Laurence Scherer

Updated Feb. 11, 2014 5:38 p.m. ET

The labors of Hercules from the Hill Collection, including 'Hercules and Antaeus' at center. Michael Bodycomb

New York

When J. Tomilson Hill, vice chairman of the Blackstone Group, was growing up along Fifth Avenue, he would enjoy visiting Henry Clay Frick's collection of bronzes at the Frick Collection. "They were accessible," he recently observed to the Frick's director, Ian Wardropper. "You could actually walk around the tables in the main rooms and see how the Turner or the Rembrandt interfaced with the bronzes there."

Renaissance
And Baroque Bronzes From the Hill Collection
The Frick Collection
Through June 15

Those early experiences profoundly influenced Mr. Hill. For the past two decades, he and his wife, Janine, have collected Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, as well as Old Master and postwar paintings. Their bronzes, which include superb works by masters of the Italian, French, German and Dutch schools, have never been shown publicly—until now.

Through June 15, the Frick is exhibiting all 33, including statuettes, larger sculptures and a bas-relief, together with several works from the Hills' other collections. The exhibition was organized by the Frick's curator of Renaissance painting and sculpture, Denise Allen. And she, along with other scholars, has contributed entries to the sumptuous and rigorously documented exhibition catalog. Emulating the accessibility of the Frick's own bronzes, the Hills have allowed theirs to be displayed without vitrines, enabling viewers to examine each work in great detail.

Reflecting European sculpture's embrace of mythology, religion, history and allegory, as well as the sculptors' keen interest in human and animal anatomy, the bronzes provide a wealth of imagery and points of comparison from the moment you arrive. Facing one another in the foyer between the lower-level galleries are two striding figures, each with wonderfully expressive hands: "Mars" (c.1600-08), by the Florentine Antonio Susini, shows the burly yet graceful musculature and refined facial expression typical of the Italian Renaissance ideal. Probably cast in the late 1560s, "Mars Gradivus," by Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode, with its wild hair, flowing mustache and heavier musculature, evokes the somewhat less elegant Northern European male ideal, which we also find in the works of Albrecht Dürer, Jan Gossaert and others.

Both figures symbolized princely power, especially in times of war. Both statuettes were produced in Florence and influenced by the Flemish-born sculptor known as Giambologna, who became a leading Florentine figure and is something of an overriding spirit in this exhibition. Susini was Giambologna's chief assistant, and his "Mars" reproduces Giambologna's model of c.1565-70. Tetrode is assumed to have composed his Mars in Florence just when Giambologna was working on his.

"Bronze," notes Ms. Allen, "is a reproductive medium," meaning that these works in metal represent the final stage in a process that begins with an artist's original model in clay or wax and proceeds in stages to the casting, sometimes by the same artist, sometimes by another. The Hill collection includes some of the finest examples of works extant in multiple castings.

A detail of 'Mars Gradivus' by Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode Maggie Nimkin Photography

The exhibition reveals how the medium's reproductive nature fostered a constant exchange of ideas between sculptors. Susini's "Rape of a Sabine" was cast c.1585, roughly two years after Giambologna completed his celebrated marble original. Their richly lacquered patination gleaming, Susini's three intertwined figures create a vortex of activity based on a spiraling configuration that Giambologna had invented years earlier to produce sculpture without a single dominant viewpoint.

Giambologna's own bronze statuette of "Astronomy," an elegant female allegory cast in the early 1570s, represents an earlier stage in his invention of the "serpentine figure." Leaning on a plinth and resting her foot on a celestial globe, she twists like a flame, her pose balanced and beautiful from any angle.

We also see this flamelike twist in the epic wrestling match of "Hercules and Antaeus," cast by Susini's nephew Gianfrancesco between 1625 and 1650. It had initially been designed by Giambologna as part of a set of silver groups, now lost, representing the Twelve Labors of Hercules.

Half a century later, this twist imparts the energy of a coiled spring to the human and animal figures in "Hercules and Iolaus Slaying the Hydra" by Giuseppe Piamontini. Cast c.1700-20, Piamontini's bronze was based on a lost model of c.1630 by the great Bolognese sculptor Alessandro Algardi. Apart from the eloquent rendering of the heroes' faces, Piamontini subtly worked the intricate bronze surfaces to emphasize the varied textures of heroic flesh, animal skins and especially the Hydra's powerful claws and multiple serpent heads.

More lyrical bronzes offer a respite from all this bellicose muscle. "Ceres and Bacchus" (c.1635-40) by Ferdinando Tacca shows the goddess of agriculture walking in quiet conversation with the god of wine and revelry. As they smile demurely at each other, Bacchus offers his companion a cup of godly vintage. The two figures gently drape their arms around one another, their affectionate gesture linking the masses of the two figures so that their metallic weight is securely reinforced and balanced.

The Hills' sacred works are displayed in their own room and dominated by Algardi's cast of his 1646 "Cristo Vivo," which we view as the sculptor intended, from below, as in a church. A masterpiece of graceful Baroque pathos, it shows the crucified Christ resigned to his suffering, his open mouth and lowered eyelids suggesting the final moment of supreme exhaustion. Nearby is the glazed terra-cotta "Crocifisso" (Christ on the Cross, 1950-52) of Lucio Fontana, and as one's eye darts between it and the Algardi bronze, Fontana's Christ figure seems to emerge from the ceramic folds of this polychrome abstraction. The gilt-touched swirl of reds, yellows and blues of "Crocifisso" echoes similar elements in the superb oil sketch of the "Assumption of the Virgin" (c. 1620) by Peter Paul Rubens hanging across the room. These fervent works proffer a quiet but grand finale to this resplendent show.

Mr. Scherer writes about music and the fine arts for the Journal.

In the media yesterday, there was a funny story from Orchard Lake, Michigan.  A man buys a house next to his ex-wife to show him how he feels about her.  The man claims that his ex-wife cheated on him when they were together with the gentleman that lives in the house now.  He decides to erect a bronze statue in his back yard to I guess get under her skin.  

Take a look at the article by clicking here, http://www.myfoxphilly.com/story/23993503/man-buys-house-next-to-ex-wife-erects-giant-middle-finger-statue . 

Figured we would pass on a funny story as when people use art to express themselves, it drives some crazy.  Enjoy.

Jason

All Classics Ltd

www.bigbronze.com

Warning About Buying LED signs from China

As we are the lowest price for full color, L.E.D. signs, billboards, tickers and more.  Back in November of 2012, we checked out a company over in Shenzhen called ERALED Optoelectronics about a glass, P20 LED sign for a window.  Was a great deal, saw nothing bad on them digging around on the internet and gave it try so we had something different to offer customers.

In December, we received the sign, the crate looked good and once we open, we realized the plexiglass had cracks on it from shipping or packaging, we were not sure but no big deal.  As I got the sign out and wired up, nothing would work.  We fought with it, called and emailed ERALED and their tech support could not figure it out and I had to talk to the one supplier of theirs who does the software.

After a number of months, we worked on this, worked late into the night with them and having outside companies attempt to fix it and NOTHING.  With many Skype calls, messages, emails and such, got in touch with a Vice President of the company who told me to buy more modules.  We said they should back up their products like every other corporation does over there but nothing.  Over time we were told to ship the modules back, all 16 of them and they would send brand new ones once the damaged ones were received.  Once we got an agreement on this, I packaged them up and sent them over to their place in Shenzhen.  Weeks went by and we kept emailing them asking where are our modules were then finally were told that they had trouble fixing them, a couple got damaged but were able to fix half and we would get the other ones brand new ready to go.

Last week, we received them, the modules were packaged nicely and once I started opening the second package inside, I noticed all of the modules were damaged severely and were not usable in any way at all.  Now we are in a loss of over $10,000.00 dollars and no one at ERALED will get back to me as the shipping company said they have to put in a claim.  They will not answer their emails, skype calls or skype messages at all but they keep emailing us about new products which is highly irritating.

DO NOT BUY ANYTHING from Shenzhen ERALED Optoelectronics CO in Shenzhen China.  We took a change and was not worth it at all.  Their site is www.eraled.biz so watch out and to this point now we are still trying to get resolution and wanted to share the world about this situation to help someone considering anything they offer, not to waste your money with them.

We do full color, graphics, video LED advertising signs, billboards, tickers and custom creations from small walkway signs to giant building size screens for indoor or outdoor.  Contact us for a quote as we can make any size, anyway you want.

Jason
All Classics Ltd
www.led-signs.co
www.bigbronze.com
www.allclassics.com