So apparently, some idolators erected this tribute to the Master of the Master Race in Texas back in 2019. As a great work of art, it is a thing that is most definitely there.
Anyway, a particularly pro-active art critic recently offered his thoughts in response:
Me? I think fake bronze over styrofoam is a dead accurate image not only of Musk, but of the entire MAGA cult.
But even more, I am reminded of this:
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
It weirdly prophetic that one of the Shelleys wrote this while the other other created the first story of a reckless technocrat who creates a monster for which he takes no responsibility and ends by it destroying his life and all those he loves. Not for nothing, perhaps, did the Greeks and the Jews think that poets could be divinely inspired to speak beyond themselves.
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One Response
I was certain the title would be referencing Mary Shelley, only to be disappointed…and then it was both!
For all the other criticisms that can validly be levied against President Trump, he does at least have enough self-awareness to notice if piece of art portraying him looks subtly but weirdly distorted and complain. The portrait of Trump in Colorado honestly wasn’t particularly bad, although I get why he didn’t like it. The bust of Musk is downright cartoonish, and I can’t imagine it wouldn’t drive him crazy to have to see it every time he visits the launch site.
I will note that despite how troubled I am by the person Musk has become (or perhaps revealed himself as), unlike Ozymandias, there will be lingering significance to the achievements of Tesla and SpaceX, unlike the lost kingdom of Ozymandias. It won’t be Gutenberg level significance, but it will still endure.
With that said, as someone who started actively following the work of both companies before most people who even heard of them, I’m very keenly aware how important the contributions of countless others have been to his success, and even how at times he has been an obstacle to that success, despite all the while reveling in the praise he gets as the founder and even “chief engineer.”
More importantly, of course, all of this is only gaining the world, which does not profit a man in the end. Vanity of vanities…