The Times Square Sculpture Is An Insult

As part of a likely-partially taxpayer-funded temporary art installation, a giant bronze statute was erected in Times Square. The promo materials call it a “nod to Michelangelo’s David.”

… the young woman depicted in Grounded in the Stars carries familiar qualities, from her stance and countenance to her everyday clothing. In her depiction, one recognizes a shared humanity, yet the contrapposto pose of her body and the ease of her stance is a subtle nod to Michelangelo’s David. Through scale, materiality, and posture, Grounded in the Stars disrupts traditional ideas around what defines a triumphant figure and challenges who should be rendered immortal through monumentalization.

Have these people ever seen the statute of David?

I last saw it two years ago in Florence at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze where it was moved in the late 1800s from its original post in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (it was originally intended for the Duomo but was too heavy for the height and redirected to the palazzo, a replica stands there now).

There is zero comparison here. It’s insulting to even cite David as an homage because that’s just an excuse to put the two together in one sentence as a way to steal prestige.

From my 2023 visit.

First, the detail is astounding. Michelangelo famously studied anatomy and physiology during a period when such study was considered unusual. The sculpture is anatomically perfect in its accuracy, down to the tendons raised in David’s hand indicating anticipation of quick action, the veins in his arms indicating increased blood flow from a furiously beating heart. His brow furrowed, his muscles tense, his weight shifting to one leg as he prepares to battle Goliath. Michelangelo’s David was doubly unusual because it presented David before his battle with Goliath, not in a vicious aftermath as a symbol of strength. It’s not a representation of human strength as much as it is a representation of intellectual strength. Michelangelo brilliantly highlights how David’s victory wasn’t due solely to physicality. David was cleverer than Goliath.

Even the proportions are perfect. Originally slated to sit on the roofline of the famous Duomo, David appears most perfect when viewed from below. His hands and head seem larger when viewed from the same plane but are rendered perfectly proportional when viewed how Michelangelo originally intended.

Michelangelo was only 26 years-old when he was commissioned for this piece and he used a discarded, imperfect piece of marble that every other sculptor had abandoned in order to do it. One story goes that a bunch of rich nobles and city officials came to view the finished piece and one nobleman, who thought himself an expert, told Michelangelo that David’s nose was too big. Michelangelo surreptitiously grabbed some marble dust in one hand and ascended the ladder to pretend to chip away at the nose, allowing the dust to drop from his other hand as he shielded the blows from sight. He finished and turned to the nobleman who declared “perfect!”

It’s perfect because it is. Nothing prepares you for how stunning it is when you see it bathed in light at the end of the Hall of Prisoners (the unfinished Michelangelo masterpieces that serve as a real-world chronological order before David arrests your gaze in his finished form).

The bronze heifer in the square isn’t even remotely comparable. There is not devotion to such anatomical accuracy. Nothing to convey feeling, either for the viewer or on behalf of the subject. The attempt is nothing more than cheap sentiment on size masquerading as some vague, body positivity motif. We’ve had centuries of celebrating what society today would consider “plus-sized women,” in fact, it was a defining feature of Renaissance art as such women were considered more healthy, wealthy, and powerful. Pretending that such a celebration of the female form is new is historical illiteracy and an excuse for bad art. Pretending that obesity means the subject is undeserving of the dignity of definition is laziness.

The woman in the square has no defining features beyond her hair. Her body’s position suggests nothing, there are no defining details on her pants, presumably denim, nor on her arms. Her face is plain, expression, dead. She looks frumpy, dumpy, and made of marzipan.

No Renaissance master would dare render an object of reverence in such an offensive manner. I’m not naming the British artist, history deserves the favor of forgetting him. This isn’t his only, and won’t be his last, attempt at pretending he’s a bronze master. His work isn’t spectacular, it conveys nothing new, and ironically seems determined to purposefully insult the very model the installation pretends to celebrate. That’s called lack of skill, lack of vision, and lack of appreciation for the female form.

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