Others questioned the feminist value of placing a male artist’s likeness of a naked, conventionally beautiful woman in such a prominent location. On social media, notes Tessa Solomon for ARTnews, a number of critics argued that the statue would make more sense as a #MeToo statement if Medusa were decapitating her rapist, Poseidon.
Some, however, are skeptical of the statue’s status as feminist art. In MWTH’s view, Garbati’s work asks, “ow can a triumph be possible if you are defeating a victim?” Anderson also founded Medusa With The Head (MWTH), an art collective that strives to reframe classical narratives. New York–based photographer Bek Andersen spearheaded efforts to install the statue in Manhattan, working with Garbati to outline a proposal for the city’s Art in the Parks program, reports Hyperallergic. Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY 2.5 Garbati's work responds to Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus with the Head of Medusa. In 2018, an image of the statue circulated on social media alongside the caption “Be grateful we only want equality and not payback.” Garbati’s statue won fame online following the exposure of Weinstein’s sexual crimes and the emergence of the # MeToo movement. “… What would it look like, her victory, not his? How should that sculpture look?” “There are lots of depictions of Medusa, and they are always describing the myth at its worst,” the artist said. As Garbati told Quartz’s Annaliese Griffin in 2018, seeing the work as a child led him to imagine a reversal of its dynamic. In Cellini’s sculpture, Perseus stands naked atop of Medusa’s corpse, holding her head aloft in victory. “While predating modernity by thousands of years, the story of a woman who was blamed, chastised, and shamed for her assault is unfortunately timeless,” notes Valentina Di Liscia for Hyperallergic. Later, the demigod Perseus beheaded Medusa as part of a heroic quest. Blaming Medusa for the temple’s defilement, Athena turned her into a monstrous gorgon capable of transforming those who looked at her into stone. Both, in turn, are based on a version of a Greek myth relayed in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.Īccording to legend, Poseidon, the god of the sea, raped a maiden named Medusa in the temple of Athena. Per a statement, the work-created by artist Luciano Garbati in 2008-reacts to Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus With the Head of Medusa(1545–1554). Titled Medusa With the Head of Perseus, the seven-foot bronze sculpture depicts the snake-haired gorgon naked, wielding a sword in one hand and holding Perseus’ head in the other. A statue that inverts the Greek myth of Medusa’s beheading now stands across the street from the Manhattan court where disgraced film executive Harvey Weinstein stood trial.
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