A Fresh New Liberty Monument

(When art and politics collide...)

By: Matthew “Timeless“ Welter

This is not your grandmother’s liberty statue — this is artillery designed to pierce the clutter of today’s culture war, next to be shared in privately owned, public spaces…

An old Dylan song proclaims, “Strengthen the things that remain”. But our intentions do not hold strongest in songs, newspapers, nor even history books. No no, that’s the role of massive monuments, and what better device to win hearts and minds in a culture war than public art, which can fortify all fronts...

Today, the only honest public spaces to display monuments are privately owned; safer than public spaces through the turbulence... From tractor convoys to warring nations, frustration ignites into action, while in America states unite against their own government. 

Across the globe, liberty is being systematically wiped from history, just like the founders, like Twain —  like Orwell himself ( “the statues and streets names were all changed” ) starting with monuments; recall summer, 2017…

Power be damned, Michelangelo’s monuments stand today despite the artist having once been placed, by the papal Medici family, under death warrant. Cold comfort to me, for I too am called to make monuments and here’s why:  

Monuments have the last word…civilizations rise and fall around monuments. They are contemporaneous, intergenerational, even intercivilizational communication and too big to ignore. Their message is fixed, which makes them ideal vessels for cultural values even if “history” is not. 

Will the digits, films and books that convey today’s values survive for thousands of years? Bonze already has. In the information age, the greatest challenge remains sending a message down time. Ironically, that’s why I’ve become enamored of wax... By digital magic, wax “originals” can now be replicated in bronze, any size, small to huge. 

A world of AI, robotics and quantum computing without liberty would be unspeakable. So yes, I do want the last word because for me that word is liberty. My research into liberty began on 9/11 and it vexes me still. I followed the thread to its roots -- ancient Sumer, with its first rule of law, first bicameral congress, first charter of human rights. The first word for liberty, “Amagi”, comes to us in cuneiform clay text... Deeper still into history I learned liberty’s ultimate purpose: Liberty is the very path to our divinity — it is a gift from the gods, whoever they really are... Prometheus stole fire from Zuse to enlighten humanity — liberty baby...

In 2019 a property investor commissioned of me a 12 foot monument in bronze, but its title, Liberty (R)evolution, had come to me a decade earlier to describe my collection of some dozen massive wooden statues. So the bronze sculpture, a paraphrase of the parent collection’s message, now shares that title.

I began with a 40 inch “rendition cast” of Michelangelo’s David — history’s epic liberator, because I like how nudity says freedom and because the master’s work, like liberty itself, was attended by renaissance. I added my own layered symbolism in wax, symbols that came to me intuitively. A life-long poet, I captured that meaning in rhyme; nebulous, to invite exploration. Then I had the foundry cast that rhyme deep into a prominent feature there.

In symbol and verse, Liberty (R)evolution records the extreme antiquity and divine potential of liberty, and with help from real owner/guardians — not governments — it will do so for hundreds, even thousands of years. I pray the sculpture and its replications find fertile soil in the hearts of today’s youth and that of their descendant’s descendants.

More images and meaning at fireinsideart.co

In December, 2023 that monument was scheduled to be exhibited in a famous international art show which travels state to state, staged in various posh hotels and resorts, and just in time for perhaps the most consequential election in history. However, just before the exhibition, PC organizers suddenly canceled its placement. 

In corrupted public art circles, political cancellations happen quietly, with always a cover reason — and I speak from experience, having been censored many times for my liberty art. (Peter Serefine lays the insidious process out brilliantly in this article, with a section about my own case half way down.) Liberty (R)evolution commits three unforgivable sins… It glorifies liberty in ways that speak to today and tomorrow, it can last thousands of years and it can be replicated in ANY size… Can’t have that during a marxist take over…  

Liberty is the thread that runs through all of the current turmoil and all of the toppled statues, yet this succession monument still lies idle in its crate, even as a real-life liberty revolution churns, but good news! It is still professionally crated and ready to ship anywhere!

Who can help put me in touch with hi-pro, display venues, where alternative media can follow its placements? This will require resilient, highly trafficked venues geared for Liberty (R)evolution’s honest nudity, fresh historic perspective and dual-genre styling — all critical implements to pierce the cultural armor… 

This sculpture is already controversial, but with just the right placements and attention from honest media, liberty can still have the last word…

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“Timeless” lives in Northern California, where he drives his (R)evolution providing specially commissioned, wooden or bronze statuary to an international base. 

Please visit: timelesssculptures.com.

Contact the artist with your ideas: [email protected]