Xah Lee, 200403, 200510
above: A renowned painting “Liberty Leading the People” (1830) by the French romantic painter Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863). ( larger size )
This is of course a figurative painting. No war zone comes with a lady with her beautiful breasts exposed and intact. This breast baring lady represents liberty in this painting. One has to wonder why liberty is represented by a (half-naked) female and almost always so. Why not, say, a man with his penis hanging? The answer of course has to do with human animal's culture, which in turn has to do with biology. It is often the male human animal who do the paintings, and they in general love the female body more than the body of their own sex. And then, ladies due to physicality tend to be non-aggressive and docile, while men are the ones who do predatory work. Largely for these reasons, liberty is represented as a female, sometimes with ripe breasts and outlandishly displayed. Likewise, figures of Justice, Love, Beauty are all beautiful ladies.
This particular French freedom babe has name. Her name is Marianne↗.
above: The Motherland Calls↗, a gargantuan sculpture of a beautiful lady adorned with a sword and showing her breast, built in 1967, at Stalingrad↗, 52 meters tall (from feet to head). (roughly 13 stories high)
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Page created: 2004-03. © 2004 by Xah Lee. (excluding mirrored pages or images.)