Friday, November 12, 2010

Africa

Allegorical sculpture of Africa by William Theed, Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, London

Allegorical sculpture of Africa by William Theed
Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens
London, October 2009

See also: America - Asia - Europa

8 comments:

cieldequimper said...

Very allegorical, not how one would imagine Africa these days.

Changes in the wind said...

Very interesting. I so appreciate that you add the web site. I am wondering why everyone has clothing on except the one man....

tapirgal said...

This is beautiful, and it's also fascinating to me. I would have loved the sculpture anyway, but the woman with the "chicken" headress (probably a peacock, yes?) was one of the engravings on a shower curtain I had for many years in the 1970s. That image of her head (well, it was the whole torso and less clothed than this one) also became part of a unique project that I may soon begin to put online on a new blog (maybe, I keep thinking about it). I self-published a book about the project (only a few copies were printed) but I designed a cover for the book with an Egyptian pyramid and this woman's head and torso. What a blast from the past and from my creative world. Thanks, VP, you've added yet another dimension to this already-complicated story. Now I wonder about the origin. I wonder if it was a sculpture first or an engraving. Certainly the shower curtain came after both of those events. And now I really do have to go see it in person.

tapirgal said...

E.g., that image is one of my life icons. I'm so happy to see it here.

Francisca said...

Quite the story, tapirgal!

The sculpture is quite exquisite... but I have a hard time seeing much of Africa in it... or perhaps my own image of Africa is too narrow.

tapirgal said...

Not to mention, I like camels and the art of this era. This is all-around a fantastic post. I will stop now :)

VP said...

@ tapirgal - I'm impressed by your story, I don't know much more about this allegory. I really like the sculptures around this monument, now I am going to post them all!

tapirgal said...

Thanks, VP. I'll look forward to them! Your photo is way better than one I found online. And answering my own question, I'm sure the sculpture came before the engraving, because so often they made engravings of sculptures so people around the world could see them.