Political correctness has now invaded even Florence’s iconic square, Piazza della Signoria, once home to Michelangelo’s magnificent David. Italian outlet Il Giornale reports that as of today, an almost four-metre-high statue of gilded bronze depicting a black girl will tower over the square. The statue, titled Time Unfolding, is the work of British sculptor Thomas J Price, and will remain on the Renaissance square until September as part of the ‘Thomas J Price in Florence’ project.
The reason behind the choice of the wonderful Italian square to display the somewhat bizarre work of art is that Piazza della Signoria “is a space devoted to male power,” which should be challenged and counterbalanced by a female figure. The issue with the other sculptures standing on the square, such as Donatello’s David, Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus, and Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus, is apparently not only that they all represent males, but that all those men are also white.
Activism obviously does not care for the fact that the figures immortalised by the statues (historical and mythological) are white by default and not by some patriarchal, toxicly masculine scheming: the indigenous people of ancient Rome and Greece happen to be white.
But that does not count when it comes to “a higher purpose” and ideological considerations. According to the artist, the square needed a statue capable of “asking questions about the social, aesthetic and political hierarchies that guide our lives, ” as he put it in an interview with Italian liberal paper La Repubblica. According to Price, “the ideal of classical beauty is a model, but also a cage that still exists, so we internalize a value system that does not put a black woman at the centre of a square.”
As Il Giornale points out, the whole reasoning is fundamentally flawed. Not only does it insist on the mistaken approach of viewing values and ideals of the past through the contemporary lens of wokeness, but it also relativises the concept of beauty. Not to mention, the paper adds, that in classical antiquity there are numerous sculptures dedicated to women both in Greco-Roman and Christian art.
Price, a black man himself, has acquired some fame for his large-scale figurative sculptures and who, according to Ocula magazine, “combines Western sculptural traditions and contemporary materials to challenge the pervasive problems of the underrepresentation and misconception of Black people in the art world and in wider society.” He, however, does not seem to have many original ideas, apart from his woke activism, considering that he keeps exhibiting the exact same type of work wherever he is invited to do so. Back in 2023, he had created a statue called Moments Contained, which was exhibited outside the Central Station of Rotterdam also depicting a black woman, while in 2020 in London, he had exhibited the same black woman statue holding a cell phone in her hand.
Il Giornale notes that Price’s artwork is also on display at the Museo Novecento in Florence as part of the project that aims to “reflect on inclusiveness, climate change and new forms of sustainability.” According to a post advertising the exhibit on the social media channel of the museum, Price’s statue in Piazza della Signoria “challenges the traditional narratives of power and representation, creating a surprising contrast with the historical masterpieces that surround it.”
De gustibus non est disputandum, that is, “in matters of taste, there can be no disputes,” as the Latin maxim goes. Price’s art may or may not be of value, or to the liking of many. However, it is somewhat disconcerting that the leadership of the Florence municipality decided to erect the statue (albeit, mercifully, only temporarily) in one of the most beautiful town squares in the world. Shoving the progressive piece of art down the throats of its own residents and the large number of tourists who visit the beautiful Italian town not to be taught lessons in critical race theory and decolonization is nothing but an act of aggression.
