1、Five Famous Symbols of American Culture,The Statue of Liberty,In the mid-1870s, French artist Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was working on an enormous project called Liberty Enlightening the World, a monument celebrating US independence and the France-America alliance.,At the same time, he was in love
2、with a woman whom he had met in Canada. His mother could not approve of her sons affection for a woman she had never met, but Bartholdi went ahead and married his love in 1876.,That same year Bartholdi had assembled the statues right arm and torch, and displayed them in Philadelphia. It is said that
3、 he had used his wifes arm as the model, but felt her face was too beautiful for the statue. He needed someone whose face represented suffering yet strength, someone more severe than beautiful. He chose his mother.,The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on an island in Upper New York Bay in 1886. It ha
4、d his mothers face and his wifes body, but Bartholdi called it “my daughter, Liberty“.,Barbie,Before all the different types of Barbie dolls for sale now, there was just a single Barbie. Actually, her name was Barbara. Barbara Handler was the daughter of Elliot and Ruth Handler, co-founders of the M
5、attel Toy Company. Ruth came up with the idea for Barbie after watching her daughter play with paper dolls.,The three-dimensional model for Barbie was a German doll a joke gift for adults described as having the appearance of “a woman who sold sex“. Mattel refashioned the doll into a decent, all-Ame
6、rican although with an exaggerated breast size version and named it after Barbara, who was then a teenager.,Since her introduction in 1959, Barbie has become the universally recognized Queen of the Dolls. Mattel says the average American girl owns ten Barbie dolls, and two are sold somewhere in the
7、world every second.,Now more than sixty years old, Barbara who declines interviews but is said to have loved the doll - may be the most famous unknown figure on the planet. Barbies boyfriend, Ken, was introduced in 1961 and named after Barbaras brother. The real Ken, who died in 1994, was disgusted
8、by the doll that made his family famous. “I dont want my children to play with it,“ he said in 1993.,American Gothic,Grant Wood instantly rose to fame in 1930 with his painting American Gothic, an often-copied interpretation of the solemn pride of American farmers. The painting shows a serious-looki
9、ng man and a woman standing in front of a farmhouse.,He was strongly influenced by medieval artists and inspired by the Gothic window of an old farmhouse, but the faces in his composition were what captured the worlds attention.,Wood liked to paint faces he knew well. For the grave farmer he used hi
10、s dentist, a sour-looking man. For the woman standing alongside him, the artist chose his sister, Nan.,He stretched the models necks a bit, but there was no doubt who posed for the portrait. Nan later remarked that the fame she gained from American Gothic saved her from a very boring life.,The Buffa
11、lo Nickel,Today, American coins honor prominent figures of the US government mostly famous former presidents. But the Buffalo nickel, produced from 1913 to 1938, honored a pair of connected tragedies from the settlement of the American frontier the destruction of the buffalo herds and the American I
12、ndians.,While white people had previously been used as models for most American coins, famed artist James Earle Fraser went against tradition by using three actual American Indians as models for his creation.,For the buffalo on the other side, since buffalo no longer wandered about the great grassla
13、nds, Fraser was forced to sketch an aging buffalo from New York Citys Central Park Zoo. Two years later, in 1915, this animal was sold for $100 and killed for meat, a hide, and a wall decoration made from its horns.,Uncle Sam,Fourteen-year-old Sam Wilson ran away from home to join his father and old
14、er brothers in the fight to liberate the American colonies from the British during the American Revolution. At age 23, he started a meatpacking business and earned a reputation for being honest and hard working.,During a later war in 1812, Wilson gained a position inspecting meat for US Army forces,
15、 working with a man who had signed a contract with the government to provide meat to the army. Barrels of meat supplied to the army were stamped “EA-US“, identifying the company (EA) and country of origin (US).,According to one story, when a government official visited the plant and asked about the
16、letters, a creative employee told him “US“ was short for “Uncle Sam“ Wilson. Soon soldiers were saying all Army supplies were from “Uncle Sam“.,After the war, a character called Uncle Sam began appearing in political cartoons, his form evolving from an earlier cartoon character called Brother Jonath
17、an that was popular during the American Revolution. Uncle Sam soon replaced Brother Jonathan as Americans most popular symbol.,The most enduring portrait of Uncle Sam was created by artist James Montgomery Flagg in his famous army recruiting posters of World Wars I and II. That version a tall man with white hair and a small white beard on his chin, a dark blue coat and a tall hat with stars on it was a self-portrait of Flagg.,
