第1个回答 2011-10-25
Five Famous Symbols of American Culture
The Statue of Librty
In the mid-1870s,French artist Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was working on an enormous project
called Liberty Enlightening the World, amonument celebrationg US independence and the France-
America alliance.at the same time ,he was in love with a woman whom he had met in Canada.His
mother could not approve of her son's affection for a woman she had never met,but Bartholdi went
ahead and married his love in 1876.
That same year Bartholdi bad assembled the staue's right arm and torch ,and displayed them im
Philadelphia.It is said that he had used his wife's arm as the model, but felt her face was too
beautiful for the statue.He needed someone whose face represented suffering yet strength,someine
more severe than beautiful. He chose his mother.
Barbie
Before all the different types of Barbie dolls for sale now,there was just asingle
Barbie.Actually,her name was Barbara.
Barbara Handler was the daughter of Elliot and Ruth Handler,co-founders of the Mattel 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-
American-although with an exaggerated breast size - version and named it after Barbara,who was
then a teenager.
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.
Barbie's boyfriend ,ken, was introduced in 1961 and named after Barbara's brother.The real
Ken,who died in 1994,was disgusted by the doll that made his family famous. "I don't 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 oftencopied
interpretation of the solemn pride of American farmers . The painting shows a serious-looking man
and a woman standing in front of a farmhouse . He was strongly influenced by midieval artists and
inspired by the Gothic window of an old farmhousem,but the faces in his composition were what
captured the world's attention
wook liked to paint faces he knew well. For the grave farmer he used his 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 wwas 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 Buffalo Nickel
Today, American coins honor prominent figures of the USgovernment - 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 ferds and
the American Indians.
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 grasslands,
Fraser was forced to sketch an aging buffalo from New York City's Central Park Zoo.Two years
later,in 1915,this animal was sold for $199 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 older 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,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 conpany (EA) and
country of origin(US).According to one story, when a government official visited the plant and
asked about the letters, a creative employee toldd 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 Jonathan that was popular during the
American Revolution.Uncle Sam soon replace Brother Jonathan as American's 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 boat and a tall hat with stars on it - was a self-
fortrait of Flagg.本回答被提问者采纳