Is it Art? Emory’s skullduggery revisited
May 12, 2009 at 1:38 pm by Jeremy Abernathy
In response to yesterday’s “Is it art?” post, the commenter not mike wrote:
That looks a lot like Dooley, at Emory. There’s no question that they would have paid for him — he’s the mascot.
Yes, and … yes! (Next time, I’ll make my hat tricks a little less transparent. You deserve better.)
The statue represents Emory’s unofficial mascot, Lord James W. Dooley — a prankster figure typically impersonated by an anonymous frat boy in a cape, during various school spirit festivities on campus (or so I’ve heard). Sculptor Matthew Palmer remarks that his design attempts to evoke both the “bravado of James Bond” and the “grace of Fred Astaire.” The sculpture was erected in September of 2008, for a grand total of $80,000.
True, the work isn’t mind-blowingly unique, but compared to other on-campus statues such as that of philanthropist and Coca-Cola mogul Robert W. Woodruff (a popular target for student graffiti), Palmer’s Dooley sculpture is surprisingly modern. The distorted metal tendrils of Dooley’s cape are intended to represent the “mysterious ether” from which Dooley came, vaguely recalling the sculptures of Umberto Boccioni or, to cite a much lower brow example, a Todd McFarlane comic.
(Photo by Jeremy Abernathy)
