I put you on a pedestal, they put you on the pill
So, ages ago I invited people to name me the ten most famous statues in the world. From that, we could deduce what the ten most famous statues actually were, and people who got the most right (and got the fewest obscure ones along the way) could feel massively superior.
I've been a bit too busy to faff about adding up the answers (LJ poll results are really not in the most helpful of formats). But vicarage politely requested the results, and last night my bus was stuck in a traffic jam for ages, so I managed to tot up the scores and write the below.
This was prompted by a picture round at our local Sunday pub quiz, where we had to name the country in which the pictured statues stood. The statues came from a top ten list online and were:
1. The Statue of Liberty, New York
2. Christ the Redeemer; Rio de Janeiro
3. The Great Sphinx of Giza
4. Moai, Easter Island
5. Michelangelo's David
6. Olmec colossal heads, Mexico
7. The Motherland Calls, Volgograd
8. Rodin's Thinker
9. The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen
10. The Terrace of the Lions, Delos Island, Greece
(We got 8/10, if you're interested - we failed to identify the Terrace of the Lions, as none of the four of us recognised it and from the picture we guessed Iran. We also failed to recognise the Olmec colossal head, but guessed Mexico correctly. We lost the other point because we didn't know what country the Easter Island heads were in. Clue: the answer isn't Easter Island, which isn't a country.)
So, according to us - and I'm fairly certain that a sample of nineteen people is definitely enough to be statistically significant - the top ten most famous statues in the world are actually:
1. The Statue of Liberty (16 votes, out of 19 voters)
1. Michelangelo's David
1. Christ the Redeemer
1. Venus de Milo
5. Nelson (of 'Column' fame) (13)
6. Gormley's Angel of the North (10)
7. Little Mermaid (8)
8. Rodin's Thinker
9. The Sphinx (7)
9. Manneken Pis, Brussels
So, as predicted our list is pretty Western-centric (but, to be honest, so was the internet's). I think Nelson and the Angel of the North give away that the voters were largely British.
Other statues in our list voted for by more than one person are (in no particular order): Mt Rushmore, Lincoln Memorial, Rodin's Kiss, Michelangelo's Pieta, Zeus at Olympus, Colossus of Rhodes, Easter Island Moai, and Greyfriar's Bobby.
A number of people also said something very vague about Buddha, which made it difficult to determine whether they were thinking of the same one or not :-) (Kudos to zotz and ghoti who both mentioned a specific Buddha, though sadly not the same one as each other.)
Winners are, by my rather hasty counting, bopeepsheep and drdoug who both managed 8 statues from the top ten list. In very narrow second place are Ghoti and kotturinn who both also managed 8 statues - but both included a statue no one else mentioned, so are penalised one point. I think this is actually mildly unfair in both cases: I can't be sure that none of the vague Buddhas wasn't actually Ghoti's Tian Tan Buddha, and Kotturinn went for the Trafalgar Square Lions, which is near as dammit Nelson's Column anyway. Hence the narrowness of the second place.
The wooden spoon goes to stegzy who managed to name six statues no one else came up with, all of them of such Anglocentric obscurity that I believe he was doing it on purpose.
Venus de Milo is at the top of our list, but didn't even make it into the internet's. I'd have said she was pretty famous. She's certainly a pretty common artistic reference point.
When I was trying to come up with my list, I toyed with the idea of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Although I'd never heard of it when I went to the Louvre nearly twenty years ago, it's one of the artworks that has its own special signpost for those doing the whistlestop tour, so presumably they think it's famous. Wikipedia describes it as "one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world". You folks don't appear to agree :)
No one here listed The Motherland Calls, which is pretty interesting in its own right. It was the tallest statue in the world from 1967 until 1991 - it's about the same height as the Statue of Liberty, but Liberty is half pedestal and Motherland is all, err, woman. She's also of interest because unlike subsequent, taller statues she's quite sticky-out-y. The current tallest statue, the Spring Temple Buddha is half as big again, but basically a column.
The Motherland Calls is also falling over. Unless you are the Russian government, in which case she is absolutely doing nothing of the kind.
The Olmec heads and the Terrace of the Lions, which both featured in the internet's list, weren't mentioned by anyone here, and I conceded I'd never heard of either of them. The Olmec head (there are many) which was used to illustrate the entry in the list is apparently known as La Venta Monument 1, which is pleasing.
I'm not entirely sure whether I'd accept Mt Rushmore as a statue. It's clearly quite a Thing, and quite famous; I might call it a sculpture. However, these things aren't terribly well defined. From the mock-ups, it looks like the Crazy Horse Memorial might be something I'd be more willing to accept as a statue (should it ever be finished).
I recently saw the Manneken Pis for the first time when I went to Brussels and was extremely underwhelmed. I hadn't realised how small it was, and I don't really understand why it's famous. It doesn't seem an especially impressive piece of sculpture; maybe everyone just likes a slightly risqué statue. I also hadn't realised that it was regularly dressed up in costumes, which I find somewhat odd. Apparently there are similar statues all over Belgium (independent ones, I mean, not replicas). There are also replicas, like one in a station in Tokyo, which are also regularly dressed up.
I've been a bit too busy to faff about adding up the answers (LJ poll results are really not in the most helpful of formats). But vicarage politely requested the results, and last night my bus was stuck in a traffic jam for ages, so I managed to tot up the scores and write the below.
This was prompted by a picture round at our local Sunday pub quiz, where we had to name the country in which the pictured statues stood. The statues came from a top ten list online and were:
1. The Statue of Liberty, New York
2. Christ the Redeemer; Rio de Janeiro
3. The Great Sphinx of Giza
4. Moai, Easter Island
5. Michelangelo's David
6. Olmec colossal heads, Mexico
7. The Motherland Calls, Volgograd
8. Rodin's Thinker
9. The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen
10. The Terrace of the Lions, Delos Island, Greece
(We got 8/10, if you're interested - we failed to identify the Terrace of the Lions, as none of the four of us recognised it and from the picture we guessed Iran. We also failed to recognise the Olmec colossal head, but guessed Mexico correctly. We lost the other point because we didn't know what country the Easter Island heads were in. Clue: the answer isn't Easter Island, which isn't a country.)
So, according to us - and I'm fairly certain that a sample of nineteen people is definitely enough to be statistically significant - the top ten most famous statues in the world are actually:
1. The Statue of Liberty (16 votes, out of 19 voters)
1. Michelangelo's David
1. Christ the Redeemer
1. Venus de Milo
5. Nelson (of 'Column' fame) (13)
6. Gormley's Angel of the North (10)
7. Little Mermaid (8)
8. Rodin's Thinker
9. The Sphinx (7)
9. Manneken Pis, Brussels
So, as predicted our list is pretty Western-centric (but, to be honest, so was the internet's). I think Nelson and the Angel of the North give away that the voters were largely British.
Other statues in our list voted for by more than one person are (in no particular order): Mt Rushmore, Lincoln Memorial, Rodin's Kiss, Michelangelo's Pieta, Zeus at Olympus, Colossus of Rhodes, Easter Island Moai, and Greyfriar's Bobby.
A number of people also said something very vague about Buddha, which made it difficult to determine whether they were thinking of the same one or not :-) (Kudos to zotz and ghoti who both mentioned a specific Buddha, though sadly not the same one as each other.)
Winners are, by my rather hasty counting, bopeepsheep and drdoug who both managed 8 statues from the top ten list. In very narrow second place are Ghoti and kotturinn who both also managed 8 statues - but both included a statue no one else mentioned, so are penalised one point. I think this is actually mildly unfair in both cases: I can't be sure that none of the vague Buddhas wasn't actually Ghoti's Tian Tan Buddha, and Kotturinn went for the Trafalgar Square Lions, which is near as dammit Nelson's Column anyway. Hence the narrowness of the second place.
The wooden spoon goes to stegzy who managed to name six statues no one else came up with, all of them of such Anglocentric obscurity that I believe he was doing it on purpose.
Venus de Milo is at the top of our list, but didn't even make it into the internet's. I'd have said she was pretty famous. She's certainly a pretty common artistic reference point.
When I was trying to come up with my list, I toyed with the idea of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Although I'd never heard of it when I went to the Louvre nearly twenty years ago, it's one of the artworks that has its own special signpost for those doing the whistlestop tour, so presumably they think it's famous. Wikipedia describes it as "one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world". You folks don't appear to agree :)
No one here listed The Motherland Calls, which is pretty interesting in its own right. It was the tallest statue in the world from 1967 until 1991 - it's about the same height as the Statue of Liberty, but Liberty is half pedestal and Motherland is all, err, woman. She's also of interest because unlike subsequent, taller statues she's quite sticky-out-y. The current tallest statue, the Spring Temple Buddha is half as big again, but basically a column.
The Motherland Calls is also falling over. Unless you are the Russian government, in which case she is absolutely doing nothing of the kind.
The Olmec heads and the Terrace of the Lions, which both featured in the internet's list, weren't mentioned by anyone here, and I conceded I'd never heard of either of them. The Olmec head (there are many) which was used to illustrate the entry in the list is apparently known as La Venta Monument 1, which is pleasing.
I'm not entirely sure whether I'd accept Mt Rushmore as a statue. It's clearly quite a Thing, and quite famous; I might call it a sculpture. However, these things aren't terribly well defined. From the mock-ups, it looks like the Crazy Horse Memorial might be something I'd be more willing to accept as a statue (should it ever be finished).
I recently saw the Manneken Pis for the first time when I went to Brussels and was extremely underwhelmed. I hadn't realised how small it was, and I don't really understand why it's famous. It doesn't seem an especially impressive piece of sculpture; maybe everyone just likes a slightly risqué statue. I also hadn't realised that it was regularly dressed up in costumes, which I find somewhat odd. Apparently there are similar statues all over Belgium (independent ones, I mean, not replicas). There are also replicas, like one in a station in Tokyo, which are also regularly dressed up.