Excerpt: The Statue of Liberty by Rizzoli International Publications

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

FOREWORD

Chapter One

I found an beautiful location. When you contemplate the city of New York from the perspective of Liberty Island’s new museum, you get the impression that the Statue of Liberty has always been there. That it needed to be there and nowhere else. It blends so harmoniously with the urban landscape that the city and port seem to have been designed by it, for it! As one of the members of the French delegation would say during the 1886 inauguration,

To tell the truth, Liberty Island was created for Bartholdis statue rather than the statue for the island. There’s the revolution. Auguste Bartholdi reinvented this island and this city. He created a landscape. If Lady Liberty had been placed in the middle of Central Park, would she attract even more than 4 million visitors each year? This statue is more than a statue. It’s a central element in the scenography of a site that merges earth and ocean, culture and nature, a city and the world. The great sculptor Auguste Bartholdi wasn’t attached to the enormous for the enormous. An originator of Land art, he intended to break with a classical system of statuary art in which the monument is assigned the role of an object, autonomous and auto-centered. This statue must have been the highest in the world during its creation because its creator had fittingly thought of New York as a painting, with a new horizon line and a new vanishing point.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

A C E L E B R AT I O N

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut laboria quam que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossidenisima iures modigent. escilicia nossi iures modigent.

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent. 1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

Its June 1871. France just lost the war against Prussia. Alsace, where Bartholdi was born, is now under German power. Paris, where he lives, puts itself back together from a revolution that failed, the Paris Commune. Despite the artist he is, Auguste is sick of France. He’s searching for a new source of inspiration, a new world. He dreams of America.

Lady Liberty transforms nature, the island, into a cultural symbol. She transfigures what was merely a port into a lasting symbol of a civilization, and maybe of the civilization. She was designed to accentuate a larger space than her: the oceanic vastness but also the world that her torch intends to illuminate. In 1886, the date of her inauguration, Lady Liberty looked at the world; today it’s the world who looks at her. For that, the quick glance of an artist who had a lot of genius was needed! The intuition was immediate and certain, and it only lasted several minutes.

On June 10, 1871, in Brest, August Bartholdi boards the Eugene Pereire liner from the French Line that connects France to America. The trip proves to be rougher than expected. Wind blows and disturbs dinners. When he’s not seasick, he reads, plays chess, learns English, chats with others, and observes the water’s movement and the changes of the sky.

Here’s how.

I FOUND AN

B E AU T I F U L L O C AT I O N.

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

A C E L E B R AT I O N

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

I FOUND AN

B E AU T I F U L L O C AT I O N.

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

His second fundamental encounter was with Richard Butler , who will become a trustworthy and efficient friend. This wealthy industrialist, president of the Butler Hard Rubber Company, is also an art collector. He participates in the creation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which will open its doors in 1872. Butler will become the secretary general of the American Committee of the Franco-American Union. After an impressive number of meetings, Auguste decides to leave to discover America’s heartland, all the way to California and back. An exhausting trip in a Pullman train or in steamers that he finds “extraordinary:” Chicago, Omaha, Columbus, the Rocky Mountains, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Oakland, San Francisco, Denver, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh . . . Bartholdi is enthralled by American nature and the Eden-like aspect of a barely conquered land. This “rough beauty” enchants him. But this disproportionate nature, man had to tame it through an unprecedented effort of creative technique.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

Bridges, viaducts, tunnels represent, to his eyes, a fantastic construction of boldness and ingenuity, like everything you see here. The European is impressed by the very new Niagara Clifton Bridge connecting America to Canada. He’s fascinated by these recent American cities whose growth was aggressive. Like Chicago, which only had five inhabitants in 1804 (compared to 299,000 in 1871). “And today you see telegraphs in the form of spiders’ webs, hundreds of newspapers; the whistles of boats and railroads create a continuous Aeolian harp music; the smoke darkens the sky; you see a huge population run, hurried by the colic of business. You don’t understand how all of that could be created in such little time. It’s marvelous . . .” In all of the traversed territories, “civilization bites every day.”

A C E L E B R AT I O N

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

I FOUND AN

B E AU T I F U L L O C AT I O N.

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

A C E L E B R AT I O N

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

This memory will result in numerous drawings and watercolors, and two paintings of immense beauty: La Californie de jadis (The Former California) and La Californie nouvelle (New California). This trek into the heartland of America ends on September 15, 1871. Exhausted but happy, Auguste rediscovers New York and his project. Saturday October 7, 1871, is the beginning. His last thought is, of course, for the island that must host his work. He notes in his journal: “Last look at the bay and Bedloe’s Island. I look at it with the same conviction as the arrival.” He announces to his mentor Laboulaye, who had encouraged him to take the trip,

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

I found an admirable location. And he promises that this monument will be a work of great moral value.

I FOUND AN

B E AU T I F U L L O C AT I O N.

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

A C E L E B R AT I O N

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

T H E R I V E T T H AT R E AC H E S T H E S K Y

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

A C E L E B R AT I O N

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

T H E R I V E T T H AT R E AC H E S T H E S K Y

1884. The French team did what it had to do. The Giant can be dismantled prior to the long trip. In an immense hangar, around fifty workers buzz about, in a deafening racket. We only hear hammering, grinding noises of filing, clinking chains everywhere agitation, a brouhaha, an enormous commotion. Youd think we were in a huge factory.

A clear path of heaps of wooden boxes, measuring 13 feet long and 8.2 feet wide, hold the Beauty’s pieces. You’d think the left hand would be in one, in the other one the right breast, and in another the bottom of her bun . . . Each piece of the Statue is fastened to wooden crossties in the shape of a diagonal cross and stuck to the crate.

The heaviest parcel weights around 1,763 pounds. In total theres 264,554 pounds of iron and 176,369 pounds of copper. Rivets, washers, and nuts and bolts take up thirty-six crates. At the Saint-Lazare train station, where this unparalleled cargo loading takes place, gigantic cranes are installed. The Isère transporter loads the Statue in Rouen and brings it to its American abode.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

A C E L E B R AT I O N

THE TORCH

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

A C E L E B R AT I O N

1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

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Chapter 07

The secret of the crown and seven points A mystery surrounds Lady Liberty’s head, encircled by this crown adorned with points. It seems to concentrate the symbolic power that the artist wanted to confer to this particular lighthouse. Let’s try to proceed with decoding it. It should first be noted that this crown outfitted with seven points isn’t very original in statuary art. We find this type of crown in numerous statues since antiquity. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for example, features a fragment of a marble Roman frieze representing

Apollo, the god of music and art; his head is encircled with a crown sprinkled with seven points, symbolizing Helios, the god of the sun. For Bartholdi, it’s reminiscent of Re, the sun god and creator of the universe in Ancient Egypt. The French Republic loves the sun. Since the French Revolution, statues dedicated to republican values are often styled with a solar halo. The Third French Republic (founded in 1870) used as the state seal the medal created by the engraver Jean-Jacques Barre in 1849: his Republic is a seated woman, wearing a crown of seven points. The poem Lux by Victor Hugo (Les Châtiments) could also be evoked, which links the Republic with the sun: “O universal Republic! / You’re still the spark / Tomorrow you will be the Sun.” In the Statue of Liberty’s symbolism, the sun resonates with the flame coming out of the torch.

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1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

The American Republic also loves the sun! This can be easy observed when looking at a $1 bill. On the back side, in the left medallion, is a pyramid surrounded by Latin words. They’re the emblems found in the American Great Seal that President Roosevelt (a Freemason himself) had written on the green bill in 1934.

Officially adopted in 1782, the Great Seal comprises a truncated pyramid, composed of thirteen levels (the thirteen original States), with a circle housing a triangle where the eye of Horus (or the “eye that sees all”) or in the American version (the eye of Providence), can be made out. This reference to Isis and Osiris’s son, and therefore to Egypt, allows us to better understand the relationship existing between Bartholdi’s Mystère d’Isis (Mystery of Isis) tablet and the Statue of Liberty. The pyramid’s base is very close to the original idea Bartholdi had for Lady Liberty’s pedestal. Numerous illuminated rays, symbolizing the sun or light, emanate from the upper triangle.

T H E S TAT U E O F L I B E RT Y.

I was able to establish that the artist had already seen this same symbol (the pyramid, Horus’s eye, the sun) in a drawing completed in 1794 to celebrate the discovery of his great-uncle, Georges-Charles Bartholdi. This great Freemason scholar, who had sort of replaced the father that Bartholdi didn’t have, was responsible for studying the chemical composition of the famous meteorite that fell on the village of Ensisheim in 1492. This object fascinated all of Europe, from Albrecht Dürer to Goethe. A document from NASA (The Meteorite of Ensisheim, 1492 to 1992) discusses this discovery and reckons that Georges-Charles Bartholdi opened up a “new path of science.” For Bartholdi, the allusion to the Masonic sun is obvious. Adolphe Crémieux, one of his friends and a member of his Lodge, had mentioned “the Great Architect of the Universe [who] gave the sun to the world to illuminate it, and freedom to support it.” The sun dispenses light, which allows us to chase the shadow of ignorance and the night of false beliefs. If the artist refused to have Lady Liberty wear the Phrygian cap, it’s not only because this symbol was too revolutionary in his eyes: it wouldn’t have permitted him to link his work to the original America and the philosophical values that were dear to him.

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1. Molut rem fugiam que ne eum quatetur rehenem laboria quam denisima que dundent fuga. Ut escilicia nossi iures modigent.

This is why Bartholdi held onto the presence of seven points. Broken down, the “seven lights” as the Freemason called them, provide access to four, a symbol of the earth (but also a nod to Masonic tile composed of black and white squares), and to three, a symbol for the sky (but also of pyramids, of the reconciliation of opposites, and the Masonic “three points). We find two numbers in Lady Liberty’s height measurement, from the feet to the head: 34 meters (111.5 feet). The artist knew that the number thirty-four, at the base of a “magic square” featured in the celebrated etching Melencolia (1514), was beloved by Albrecht Dürer, who admired an engraver from Colmar who Bartholdi iconized: Martin Schongauer. Adding three and four equals the famous seven. This is also why Lady Liberty’s front is adorned with twenty-five windows: 2 + 5 = 7. We discovered that the artist hesitated.

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A recently identified bronze reduction, signed by Bartholdi and dated to 1875, evidences this. We find the crown and its seven points, but the twenty-five windows disappeared in favor of seven stars with five points. The blazing star equally nods to Isis and Masonic iconology. The artist preferred windows, which are openings that allow us to see the world thanks to the clarity the sun dispenses and the torch’s flame. In the astronomy books Bartholdi reads, it’s common to say that the sun requires twenty-five days to turn around itself. A rationalist with Pythagorean tendencies, the artist thought about all the points of the crown and windows. The alliance of the number seven and the number twenty-five isn’t a coincidence. It allows us to access the “absolute square.” How? He breaks down seven with 3 + 4. Then he adds three squared (9) to four squared (16), which equals twenty-five (9 + 16 = 25).

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