Father's Day 2024

 Father's Day

Today is Father's Day.  We'll celebrate it with some sculptures of naked fathers and sons.  Above, Laocoön and his Sons (40-30 BC) in the Vatican Museums.  In ancient Greek and Roman writings, Laocoön was a priest of Troy, and the gods sent serpents to attack him and his sons.  Depending on the story, it was either because he was about to expose the ruse of the Trojan Horse, or because he profaned the temple of Poseidon by having sex in the temple.

This is Hercules Carrying his Son Telephus, 1st-2nd cent. AD, in the Louvre, Paris.  In Greek legend, Telephus was the son of Hercules and the priestess Auge, who was forced to abandon him in the mountains, where he was suckled by a doe (note the doe at the bottom) until he was rescued by his father.

Ugolino and His Sons by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1861, in the Petit Palais, Paris.  In this gruesome story from Dante's Inferno, Ugolino was an Italian Count who was sentenced to die by being locked in a tower along with his children and left to starve.  The statue shows Ugolino at the moment when he is considering cannibalism to stay alive.

A superficially more pleasant scene on the pediment of City Hall, Brisbane, Australia, 1868.  The woman at right represents "progress"; to the left of her we see a settler family: mother, naked father and son, and their cow.  However, further to the left is a native Australian and wildlife being driven out by the settlers.  In 1868, that was considered progress.

Father and Son Fountain by Louise Bourgois, 2005, in Seattle.  The water alternately rises and falls to obscure one figure or the other, supposedly representing the emotional distance and vulnerability of the father and son.

There's no distance in the sculpture Far och son (Father and son) by Olof Ahlberg, 1921, in Östersund, Sweden

Likewise in the sculpture Vater und Sohn (Father and Son) by Reinhold Schmidt, 1969, in Kühlungsborn, Germany.  Note that the father's penis is shiny from people rubbing it for good luck.

We end with this somewhat bizarre sculpture Isa ja poeg (Father and son) by Ülo Õun, 2004, in Tartu, Estonia.  The sculpture is a self-portrait of Õun with his 18-month-old son Kristjan, both naked and both the same height.  It's supposed to symbolize the relationship between generations.  Note that both the father's and son's penises are shiny from people rubbing them.

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers (and daddies) out there!