Hey, everyone.

This episode features a lot of discussion about statues, which are things that you can famously see but not here.

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All Right, onto the show.

I'm Anny, I'm Noah.

This is Devin and this is no such thing.

The show where we settle ourdam arguments and yours by actually doing the research on this week's episode, Why do new statues look so bad?

No, there's no no such thing, no such thank no touch, thank touch, thank no touch thank.

So.

Here's a topic that comes up every few months.

There will be an unveiling of a new sculpture celebrating an iconic historical figure politician, entertainer, often an athlete recently, and the statue just look horrible.

It might look like a person, but not that person.

Proportions are off or even just like it's kind of close but just strange.

Yeah, and it's tough because we all these are very famous people.

That's the bible we really know.

We see all the time, pretty recognizable exactly.

Speaking of which, on the screen here our listeners can't see it, but of course there'll be on our newsletter.

Probably the most infamous one in recent memory, even though it's from twenty seventeen, is the statue that we're looking at of soccer star Christiano Ronaldo.

A very handsome man in real life, a real chad, yes, And it was unveiled at Madeira Airport in Santa Cruz when the airport was officially renamed.

I didn't know this part.

It's the Christiano Ronaldo international level, so it's a pretty big deal.

It was like, all right, he's you know, he's a legend.

Let's have a.

Lot of there's a Ronaldo Airport, but there's not a messy airport.

You're going through the trouble of renaming the airport, and then this is the statue that you make of so very attracted His statue is one of the ugliest people I've ever Just.

To make it clear for people who maybe don't watch soccer Christiano Ronaldo.

I think a lot of people consider him one of the most attractive men on earth, and then we've got this statue that kind of looks like he's like sick.

I think like he's got like something's wrong.

With him and he's fighting through it.

He's like smiling through.

The so just from neckup.

Yeah, you know, a full body here.

What's the Danny Boyle movie with the drug addicts train Spotting?

Train spot He looks like one of the dudes from train Spotting And yeah, like he was just on a bender, you know, maybe he's gone through something withdrawal.

To me, it's like his eyes are slightly different size in there, kind of slanted and then his mouth is slanted in the opposite direction.

Yeah, they've introduced like wrinkles in the statue, like very natural wrinkles when you when you make faces, that happens.

But they just look so bad here.

And what always gets me about these statues is like, I guess humans have been making realistic statues for thousands of years, right, I don't understand why in the in the past like twenty years, we've just simply cannot come up with a good bust of someone.

So this statue here has had a bit of a saga.

It was made by a sculptor, Emmanuel Santos.

Doing disservice to the name and yeah.

So yeah, you need to talk to your boy.

So everyone hated the statue kind of immediately as a total joke.

He was quoted by the BBC as saying that, you know, making one of these is not as simple as it seems, and it's a matter of.

Taste, a matter of taste.

And then he also said it is impossible to please the Greeks and Trojans.

Neither did Jesus please everyone.

He's comparing himself to Jesus.

You know what, I kind of respect that, you know statue, the trials and tribulations of Jesus Christ.

You know, I'll respect that.

Do a bad job, and then be like, well they also hated Jesus, you know who else was disrespected.

He did make a replacement that went up the following year.

This one looks more like a person.

That one looks like a cartoon almost.

The new one just seems more simplistic.

The new version is like a passport photo.

Yes right, Yeah, it's a little bit more generic, but I think in a good way.

Yeah, or like it's safer, Yeah, it feels safer.

It's a good way.

Put it so.

And there's a few more, and we'll talk about these later.

There was Martin Luther King in Winter Park, Florida, NBA's Dwayne Wade outside the Mines.

That one is incredible because the meme of his son giving him just like looking at him like, all right, that's your statue.

And he basically had to pretend to like it.

Yeah.

Yeah, So he's quoted by ESPN, he said, is Dwayne Wade.

If I wanted to look like me, I'll just stand outside the arena, y'all and take photos.

You don't need to look like me.

It's an artistic version of a moment that happened that we're trying to cement.

So we'll get into that one later, all right, don't need to look like me about a statue.

He's being very nice.

I think he's defending the artist.

Maybe.

I'm sure it was just a debacle.

And I'm personally invested in them getting this right because, as much as I don't like to admit it, in a few years, Lebron James is gonna retire.

They're gonna have to make a bust or a statue of him, and if it's bad, I might fucking act out.

But they need to sort this out as soon as possible, and I want to see it through.

Only Yeah, only for Lebron.

Yeah, I guess what I'm thinking here, Like why these end up being so ugly so often is that sense of a sculptor's artistic take on what the person looks like, which is what Dwayne Wade was saying, which I kind of agree with, which is like, if I'm commissioned to make a statue of Noah, like we know what Noah looks like, I might want to do something different with it.

I don't know, shange it up.

I think what they need to understand, I think, at least for these athletes, is that we just want it to look exactly like it should be photo realistic, and that's going to make us happy.

The masses don't need a you know, yeah, we don't need an artistic take on what no it looks like.

See here's my issue with that.

Okay, I'm okay with them taking artistic licenses, but make it look good.

Yeah, you know.

It's like what ends up happening is it seems like they're just doing a bad job of like making a photo realistic version of a person.

And they're like, oh, I'm just it's my interpretation.

It's like, no, if you're going to have a style, go for it.

Make it look completely different.

Because this doesn't look so different.

It's not like a full cartoon or exactly.

It's like, Okay, this is just like supposed to Yes.

I know you mentioned Martin Luther King and Florida.

I guess the MLK and DC is maybe a bit more of like it's more of like an abstract take on it.

So I give a little bit more leeway to something like that.

But most of the feels like they're trying to do the photo realistic thing and then feeling and then being like, well, it was supposed to look bad.

That's my style.

My styles, I make bad looking statues.

You know they hated Jesus too.

That's the best excuse I've ever heard.

Of my little It's also said because like you know, we're not massive you know, contemporary sculpture heads.

No, So it's like all we know from this man now is this.

Yeah, by far gonna be the most seen statue that guy ever makes.

Yep, But you know, give me, like do a cause, you know, give me.

I hate to cause stuff at this point now, but like you know, you know, do that sort of thing where it's like, hey, it is Ronaldo, but it's.

Just like costs Yeah, he's doing what he wants.

Yeah, exactly like if you if they were to do that, I'd be like, you know what, that's that's their take on.

Yeah, And I think like for a portrait, a painted portrait, we're a lot more forgiving of that sort of stuff just because there's a little bit more to play with it, or like we're just more used to that.

So I want to find out why are these statues so bad?

Yeah?

That d Wade quote had me wondering, like are we being unfair just because we do know these people?

Like you go to the.

Met there's all these beautiful statues, but they are like mythical characters or something.

They're not people that we actually know or we know them by their statues.

Yes, not like introduction.

We haven't watched you know, thousands and thousands of hours of this guy running around.

Yeah you know.

And then also just like should statues be like super realistic or should we be more up to more creative interpretations?

And just generally like our sculptors getting worse, Like is this the lost art form?

So after the break, I'll talk to someone who actually knows what they're talking about, a sculptor.

Oh, so to understand why these public statues are so bad.

I caught up John Ballardo.

He's not only a sculptor himself, but he also teaches and serves as Lehman College's chief College Laboratory Technician for art, and he instructs out a few other art schools in the city.

I mean, I looked at his stuff, and he does like proper sculptures of people.

Things like that looked pretty good.

Okay, he hasn't done any you know, athletes, as far as I know, So first I asked John to walk me through the history of portrait sculptures.

How far back do they go and what's their original purpose.

The idea of an individual portrait, a likeness of an individual is credited to the Romans, who it was part of a pagan culture that they were doing life casts or actually guest casts in wax of their family members, this kind of patriarchal system, and it was part of a ritual where they would pull these out during certain ceremonies, and then of course as the culture grew, they would take these deaths masks and actually carve them in marble.

The idea there was that these were revered individuals, and so the likeness of them became very important, and that included all the realism, which means all the wrinkles in your face and everything that you can imagine in the age of the individual, rather than a youthful, beautiful appearance.

So the idea of a death cast was the way we would record more objective information about the portrait over time.

You know, you had those two things.

You had, you know, either some sort of a casting or you would have the person directly in your studio.

Michaelangelo famously never did a portrait.

You know.

He you know, was asked many times, but he in some ways he refused.

And so the idea of a portraiture, it's not always something that artists take on.

John got to what might be the key issue for the modern sculptor, which we touched on earlier, is photography.

Photography changed everything because now the public generally knows what the person looked like, you know, and that's important.

Likeness and liveliness or the living person underneath are our similar ideas.

But in a lot of ways, a person that you don't know what they look like, as long as it retained a certain liveliness, a certain naturalism, it didn't need to obviously look exactly like the person, because eventually that's what the person looked like and according to history.

Obviously, now we're dealing with more objective record of their image.

So there's something there to the fact that we actually just know what these people are because they're contemporary to us, so we've seen them in action and doing all this stuff.

Yeah, Michelangelo obviously a great sculptor.

I didn't know he was like, I'm not going to do any real portraits, which is pretty amazing.

But yeah, I love that my boy knew his limits.

Yeah he I'll make an amazing David, but that's David.

Yeah, yeah, no last name exactly.

Don't ask me who he is.

And maybe, you know, no disrespect to our boy Manuel.

Maybe maybe he should have did the same, Maybe he should have opted out.

Actually I can't really, that's not for me.

He's like, I'll do a soccer player, Yes, an amazing handsome soccer player, but it's not necessarily not handsome.

This one, the one he made, is not handsome handsome.

I can make a really kind of ugly dude and may play soccer.

Boss.

I got that sculpture for your real ugly, weird looking.

I wonder if Mike.

The reason Michaelangelo refused to do them was because they it is something you can grade essentially.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it kind of I'm gonna look more into that, but yeah, it seems like it where it's like because like I think most of his work was commissioned.

It's like, you know, whoever these families or whatever.

But to just refuse to do that, it's like one leading a lot a lot of money on the table.

For sure.

And he used to say that the statues we know in love actually look like the people that they were supposed to look.

Yeah, exactly, yeah, find us but yeah no, yeah.

When when John said, you know, they look fine, because that's now what they look like, Yeah, it's like, oh, I don't mind blowing.

And that's just how it was before, you know, basically whatever one hundred and fifty years ago.

Well imagine if our boy David was actually like an ugly dude.

Oh yeah, and he's like, damn, that's me.

Yeah, he's just a really really rich, ugly y.

He's like, listen, I'm gonna treat you well.

Just give me a nice sport, nice statue here.

This is gonna last for.

Like, don't look at me, look at that statue.

That's what I look like at my soul.

Yeah, here's how John describes the process and considerations with a project like this.

If it's from life, then the person really should be in the studio with you, but that's not always possible.

So we often at this point work from photography, which is a blessing and a curse.

So let's set up a space where we can start working from photography.

In the case of many people that would deserve a portrait in the public, it would be something that there's a ton of photography over the course of many years, so you would have to be very careful about the photographs you are using, and certainly the more the better, but also an understanding of how those photographs were taken, from what distance, from what lighting source, and then whether or not you can trust the measurements from them.

All portraiture or all likeness comes from proportions, believe it or not, like the distance between your eyes and compared to your size of your nose.

But that's easy when you're doing a painted portrait because it's two dimensional.

And not to say anything negative about painters, but sculpture is way more difficult because now we're talking about the depths of form rather not just heightened with and then from there you're relying on several things that hopefully you've educated yourself on.

The first thing would be anatomy, what are the likely formations on the human head that arise from bone structure, muscle structure.

And then you would also take information from your own memory and your own imagination in order to work from the portraits that you've done from life, so that the information has to be both empirical as well as rational, as well as just outside sources.

And then it ultimately comes down to trial and error adding and subtracting clay.

Something that people don't always consider is color.

The color of your eyebrow, the color of your eyes, the color of your hair, the color of your pupils, and the color of your lips, everything, And so how do you do that with clay?

That's one color?

So you're usually dealing with what's called a color, that is this relief quality that has to do with the way light sweeps across a surface, gaining light and shadow in order to create this kind of black and white or gray scale structure across that and of course you have to be able to control that, even though you can't ever control the lighting in an outdoor where you need to be able to control it enough where those things aren't going to destroy it.

It's a really interesting point about the color because I'm looking at the Ronaldo statue again, and I do wonder if it were like painted to look to be like his skin color and his lip color and his hair color, like how much more realistic it would look.

And it being this dark bronze.

And then I'm assuming this is probably camera flash, but also just even sunlight the way it reflects so strong, like these highlights are kind of glaring.

Yeah, it doesn't do him any favors.

It looks like it looks like Rinaldo did blackface or something.

And then they made a statue of him, and just it just I wonder if it looked to put that on.

All right, we'll cut that out.

But it's just like such a weird it is.

It's tough to kind of parse this out as a real human being when it's just bronze, like.

Yeah, or even if it was like a like a classical marble or something, you know, and you know, yeah, he tells a good story about the Lincoln memorial, and once the statue was placed in the monument, the lighting was really off and like kind of spooky, like it was like under lighting him.

And this is like, you know, the two artists, the sculptor and the architect, were like two legends of the game, like at the peak of their powers, and like even they messed that up and had to like they made some adjustments to the monument so the light would work better.

But it's like, ultimately, there.

Are so many different things, especially when it's gonna be outside, that I certainly hadn't really considered, even aside from just the difficulty of making a three D sculpture to.

Begin with, Yeah, the environment is going to be in it, so important.

Proportion really interesting when you think about photographs, you know, if you photograph one person in the same room with different lenses, Yeah, portly changed so dramatically.

So yeah, that wasn't something I considered.

You know when you're looking at these photographs, is that like, yeah, you may start with one proportion and then you got to realize, like, okay, you got to take kind of the averages of all these things, because you know, just the front facing proportion may not look the same from a point five versus you know.

One thirty five or something wider.

Your face is like way more pointed.

Okay, yeah, but if it's the twenty four millimeters lens, it's like your face is way more flat.

Yeap, that's like when the camera adds ten pounds espectually.

Yeah.

So after getting insight on kind of how hard it is to make a statue and what they're thinking about, I ask kind of the big question, our sculpture is getting worse or are we just more knowledgeable about what these subjects actually look like.

It's the latter, we know these people more over time.

There's a thousand things you're dealing with with a modern portrait.

You know.

The first thing is the recognizability of the person.

We had talked earlier about photography, but now it's also video and particularly sports figures.

They are recognizable in action, right, and so sculpture tends to be pretty static, right, So now we have to deal with that energy.

And so how do you bring in energy into a portrait as well as a likeness as well as liveliness and hit it dead on?

It is the sort of thing that humans are very sensitive to, very sensitive to recognizability.

We can recognize our friends from down the street by the way they're walking.

The other thing that happens is that art schools have not adequately trained sculptors over the past fifty years, and so a sculptor who goes through a normal education in America is not given any of the adequate training in anatomy and modeling, and a lot of artists don't realize that before they take on this very important responsibility.

Artists nowadays are trained to express themselves and to be the center of attention, and to think of their work as ephemeral and yet freewheeling, where a sculpture, particularly of somebody as important as MLK, has to speak to the past before you were born you as an artist, and will retain its meaning after you're dead.

So now we are talking about something very important, and it's now no longer about the artist.

So the training of an artist just goes counter to that.

The first thing that I saw with when I saw Ronaldo was maybe this artist was trained more as an anime or they draw on cartoons, you know, and that's unfortunately considered to be a good training for the things that they're asking to do.

It needs to be about the individual you're portraying, and the most important thing you can do is show respect to that image.

You're showing respect to what the public thinks of that individual, what that individual has represented, and the first thing they represented this image.

So if you show respect to a likeness, then you're showing respect to what that person has done their entire career.

One thing that really stuck out was kind of talking about the training where and it makes sense when you think about it.

You say you really like painting, you go to school.

It's the idea is like you're painting your own stuff, like whatever you want.

And that's pretty different than you know, the days of Michelangelo or wherever where Okay, they're hired to paint the ceiling and then you do that, and that's it's not really about you.

Obviously there's gonna be things you put in there right as a great artist or whatever.

But so kind of in these situations, they're kind of trapped because you're you're trained to do your own thing, and now the expectations totally kind of flipped in a way.

Even if you studied, you know, representation on all these things, so you know, you feel for these guys a little bit.

That they maybe were set up a little bit out of there.

So after that I ran a few of these sculptures by John.

I want to go to the Duwayne Wade statue.

Go to no such thing dot Show for the you know to see these images.

So on the bottom left, that's the image that's being recreated.

You see a you know, closer up detail of the statue there.

Man, why don't you describe what's happening here in the original photo.

In the original photo, I don't know.

Dwayne Wade must have hit a three or something.

They did.

They did a good job doing something specific, and he's kind of he's amped up, he's yelling, he's hyping up the crowd, and so he's in a position that's like I think maybe he's doing a this is our house, yeah, something like he's pointing towards the ground saying, you know, this is our this is our spot, and in the statue you know it.

For whatever reason, he they look like they just aged him by like thirty years, Like he just looks like a really old man.

This may be the coloring sort of thing too, isn't helping because Dwayne Wade in this photo is relatively young.

Like that was a long time ago.

Yeah, he's probably late twenties or something in this photo and in the statue, I don't know.

It just is like I don't understand the aging aspect here.

They've also seemed to do like the statue version of his fade haircut, which yeah, a statue just makes it look like he only has like a tiny little bit of hair.

It's tough to do a fade in like bronze or whatever.

He looks like the zombies from Iron Legends.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he looks so gaunt.

I think, yes, and d Wade is like, you know, pretty good looking guy, but he had and he has like he.

Has like cheeks, he's got like yeah.

He's not chubby by any means obviously, but his face has like yes, I mean he looks good, but yeah, it's like you can see a smile in the photo with the statue, It's like, yeah, it just looks pretty different than this man in the sculpture.

Now, this is a This is an instance where with the Ronaldo statue you can tell that there was an attempt to make it look like Christiano Ronaldo and it just went wrong.

This looks like a different person.

This doesn't look similar to this.

They're like, all right, here's the post we want and put him into Miami Jersey.

Yeah, it doesn't really look like it's based on Wade, excepting the fact that he's a you know, athletically built and wearing Yeah yeah, but yeah, Like, if you just showed me that face, especially without Miami on the I wouldn't even think that's ay.

It's like a civil rights what is happening here?

So the Duyane Wade portrait, So not only do you have movement, you have energy, you have you know, you're trying to deal with likeness and the proportions, but now on top of it, expression with the mouth open.

This is something that happens all the time.

A commissioner or somebody who is paying for this will say, we want the individual to have this expression or we want it to be referring to this photograph.

A smile is actually one of the most difficult things in the world to capture an expression like this, and he has this great, you know, grin and this excited yell.

This is one moment in time.

It's kind of like, you know, you take a bad candid photo and you know you have this weird expression on your face because you know you're in the middle of talking like this, and that doesn't look like you.

But it's like this, this odd little shape, you know, And so that's I think what's happening here.

A sculpture unfolds over time, so people interact with it as if they come up to it and they see it and they move past it, and now it's a it's a three dimensional image that that's exposed to the viewer over time.

And to try to capture this snapshot instant of time and a sculpture is extraordinarily difficult.

And so what's happening there is I think it has more to do with our of it, our perception, this juxtaposition, or this jarring experience of looking at this static sculpture with this highly energetic expression.

I think that's really what it is.

When his mouth is open, that changes the way he squints with his eyes, and so that's that's you're not going to recognize the person like that.

You don't recognize people in that state, but you could recognize them if you saw them doing the jumping and excited dancing.

But it's over time.

It's not an instance.

You know, we're always going to look awkward that way.

I don't envy the you know, the artist, you know, I think in this case did an admirable job for an impossible cask.

That's my opinion.

These statues, you know, I think maybe they should start being closer to the classical portrait we're thinking of.

So if you're gonna have a statue of an athlete outside of the stadium, maybe they really shouldn't be in in like some crazy position or like doing something in motion, because, like he was saying, you know, even when you look at the photo of Dwayne Wade, like we know through context clues and through just knowing his face that that's Dwayne Wade, but it doesn't like, quote unquote look like Dwayne Wade.

Yeah, like he's he's like really scrunching his face up.

If he wasn't in that jersey, if he wasn't if he was like on the street instead of in the basketball scenario, we might be like, who's this?

Like I don't know exactly who that is.

Right, We're not looking at a statue being like, oh, does this look like Dwayne Wade looked in that specifically doesn't not ye frame of that shot.

It's like this this is like Dwayne Wade.

Oh, and he's doing the motion from that moment.

Yeah, you need to trust your own legacy that you know, you can just be be sat with a basketball I'm going on a yeah, but you know, with a Miami Heat jersey one.

All right, so let's move away from athletes.

Connor, would you mind pulling up one of the MLK photos.

I don't think i've seen this all.

Yeah, let's know this so well.

Obviously, love great reverend, that's what are your what are your takeaways here?

I mean yeah, like there's like a children's book.

Yes.

To me, the big thing is just his head.

I mean proportion sizes.

Aren't a particularly tall guy.

No, you're sure.

I'm pretty sure, you know, so they got the body size accurate.

But his head is enormous and his.

Hands ye huge.

Sh Now, this is tough too, because back then they were wearing some big ass suits.

Yeah, kind of hide what your body like?

This looks like, uh if I was making an MLK like sports team and I needed a mascot for it, you know, it's like we were.

R It does kind of look like a like a a kid in in elementary school.

Drew Drew image of him, and then they're like, all right, we're gonna make a statue of yeah, we got off the photos anything.

Which is why I wonder if it's supposed to look exactly.

I'm trying to look at the details of the face to see doesn't look like, yeah, it looks like a guy.

It looks like a man.

Yeah, it looks like a man.

Like it looks like a black man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no mistake there.

The hair looks pretty good on this one, actually, yeah.

True, he looks like a kid in his face, like his church clothes.

Yeah.

But what is fascinating about this is that every different photo looks like a completely different set.

Like his head looks enormous in this wearing another different angle, kind of slightly to the left, I suppose, really straight on.

Yeah, it's like a caricature style.

Interesting.

And yeah, and this one not you know, there's motion he's waving, but it's not like he's not it's not celebrating a buzzer beater that would be.

It's not like, oh, you know, you know, I'm okay, I was, I was doing that waving his hand.

It's like he's most famous for, you know, walking, you know.

Stand walking very long distance.

This.

I'm like, this is like a town assemblymen.

Yes, no offense to the greatest symbol.

It's in winter Park, Florida.

Okay, it feels like Martin Luther King's statue in Winnipark, Florida.

Yeah, you know this.

Is in the DC.

Yeah.

Yeah, it feels like, all right, you've got a local artist in Winnipark like this.

The other weird thing with the Florida statue of Martin Luther King, And this is very similar to the Dwayne Wade one in that they just aged him.

Yeah, Martin Luther King Ray.

Well, a lot of people might not recall, but he died very young.

He's in his thirties when he was killed.

And so this guy in this statue looks like he's seventy.

Everybody looks like their father thirty nine.

Yeah, I think late thirties.

But yeah, still, oh yeah, that's a very young person.

Yes, I'm about to be looks as we discussed people used to look older.

Yeah.

No, I was thinking.

I was like, but not that, damn.

I was.

I was like, maybe it's in our head that just like statues are old people.

Yeah, I think it's.

Probably a little bit bronze's but like, yeah, the Ronado one didn't look that old, you know, no like relative, you know, just as another comparison point.

And I know there's the famous one in d C which I got to see a couple of years ago, which does look just like him.

But this is an interesting, very interesting statue.

Yeah, the DC one's cool.

Well, that one's like I can't remember the word, but when it's like coming out of the block.

Yeah, he's coming out of the slab.

I think his face looks much more accurate in this one, I think.

And the DC one yeah, yeah, this.

Was like the official Yeah, and that's.

More if we want to do some artistic that's the way to do it, right, Like, it still looks like the person, but it's not just a straight statue.

He's coming out and let work.

Yeah, yeah, you don't out of slab.

Forget the back.

Not sure that's what he was thinking of.

They got you ran up to the deadline.

Actually it's supposed to look like this.

Yeah, I wasn't supposed to finish the back to there knocking on the door.

I feel like that one got some criticism when it first came out too, though, Yeah, probably I like this one.

Yeah, I think it does a great job.

I feel like, yeah, the artist being able to add their little touch to it, but also representing the person well, looks like the person serving the purpose of the statue, which is not that like, Oh, this guy's just such a great sculptor, it's supposed to look like them.

Well.

The first thing I noticed about the Winter Park MLK is that it is out of proportion.

Now I'm only looking at it from photographs and video, but it appeared that the head was too large.

That's the first thing.

Proportions in a very large statue outdoors is something that a sculptor needs to be able to control.

Sometimes we might make the head slightly smaller because of the way we might be looking up at the statue.

Other times, you know you were going to change the proportions in different ways in order to again because of the way you might interact with that's a sculpture.

How big is it in compared to the viewer?

How big is it in compared with architecture?

The likeness itself, for me, it doesn't look like an Okay, ultimately in likeness you're talking about millimeters, But when you enlarge something sometimes those distortions can feel exaggerated.

So when you're talking about the proportions of a likeness and then the scale of your proportions, now you're going up and it's getting bigger and it's outside.

That's a terribly difficult thing to control.

But it is the responsibility of the sculptor.

I do wonder seeing some of this stuff, especially looking at a Martin Luther King thing.

Right, this guy makes this thing, he puts it all together and he sets back and he's like, God, damn it that head is.

Yeah.

Do they ever just start over, you know, like damn you know, like I mean, well you're making it portrait.

You just get a new piece of paper and you know, start sketching the game.

I'm sure it depends on the material, and I imagine like the budgets and all these things, but it's like you're either then adding clay or whatever back on or chipping away.

It's like, all right, so now you have this giant, mkay head.

Now you need to chip away the entire thing and keep it in proportion.

Yeah, because then you'd have to if you made his head smaller, you would have to go back and make his eyes and his nose.

And then you make it too small, then you need to chop off the whole bot.

You know.

It feels like a lot of time these guys are just like, oh bad first attempt, you know, like, oh damn, you know, you try something that's not quite it.

But if I did it again, yeah, I could get a little bit closer.

Yeah, And it feels like they just don't get another shot, you know, they get the one shot and it's just not right.

They need they need to put them on way longer time.

Yeah.

Feel like like when you invite people over for a party or something and you give them, you know, two hours early, knowing no one's going to be there exactly.

Oh yeah, yeah, so you do that first version.

Not great, you got another couple of months to get it together.

So having learned all this, and John said, you know several times, like he doesn't envy any of these artists who have to do this, Yeah.

What I've learned is that it's a much more impossible task than I had originally thought.

Not not an impossible one, but just like there's so many it's such an uphill battle to make like an accurate statue.

Yeah, and I just want to again make sure that the people who end up being in charge of the Lebron James Statue.

To listen to this episode, so try to get on the committee.

I'm going to start making sure I don't ever smile just for you know, for the artists down the line when they're doing the NST.

Yeah, you know statue.

Yeah.

I definitely have deep respect for any sculptor of any capacity who's done any of these.

And you know, it's given me more to consider when I am looking at these, especially just simple stuff like the lighting and how much that that can affect how you take these in.

And the biggest thing to me think like you're just interesting to think about the history of it, where it's like, yeah, like I actually don't know what any of these old statues look like, or like even like someone slightly more recent, but like pre photography.

It's like someone like Napoleon or something.

It's like, all right, there's plenty of paintings too, so like you're basing that and then whatever sculpture it's like, but it's still like those are fake images, just like make up this person in our head, you know.

Yeah, And I think the final thing they'll need to consider is like making a flattering image of the person instead of something that's one hundred percent supposed to be look, you know, one to one realistic, something that you know, gives you something to look at that is flattering of the subject.

Yeah, and feels represented.

I feel like we gotta somebody's gotta change our expectations, right, We got to stop asking them to make statues of very specific moments in time, right, Like it just needs to be like, okay, make it look like this person.

And I feel like the artists need to just understand, Hey, we're not here.

It's not about you.

We're not here to see your work.

Yeah, We're here to see a representation of this person.

Yeah.

Yeah, you have to understand you put your personal style to the side unless you know you're going to do something like the like I said, the MLK and DC pretty good combination of those two.

This guy doing a Ronaldo like like, like I boy said, I don't know if he's doing anime drawings or whatever the hell he was trying to do with the statue.

We don't want the statue to look like an anime draw.

Soon, all these statues are gonna look like damn laboo boos.

Yeah, these statues were really meant to walk up to them and be like, that's yep, that's Lebron James.

Yeah, it's essentially.

We want a photograph.

Yeah, a three D photograph made of one color.

I mean, good luck, Yeah, good luck.

Any sculptors are listening in wanna make a free sculpture of us?

Shoot us an email.

We won't be too harsh.

He's He's helsay Hewsay Hews.

No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope content.

Our executive producers are Kate Osborne and Mangesh hot To Cadur.

The show was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and Devin Joseph Them and credits song by Manny.

Mixing is by Steve Bone, our guest this week with sculptor John Billardo.

You can visit www dot No such thing dot show to subscribe to our newsletter, where you can find images of all the sculptures discussed in this episode, and if you have feedback for us or a question, our email is Manny Noah Devin at gmail dot com, or if you're in the US, you can also leave us a voicemail by calling the number in our show notes.

We'll be back next week with a new episode.

Thanks for listening, Hell's hell's, hell's ayes, Hell's no such thing.