Reception
The memorial has been well received from the outset. When shown sketches the design, one of the Adelaide contingent described it as "spirited" – a word that was echoed by King Edward VII upon being shown a photograph of the model that was produced. When the completed statue arrived in Adelaide in 1904, the committee was reportedly delighted, and many in Australia viewed it as the best statue in the country.
In more recent times, Ken Inglis has described the work as the "apotheosis" of the bushman soldier, representing the bushman and the horse at war (the "Australian centaur"), and noted that it was possible to view the memorial as commemorating "dead horses as well as dead men". Simon Cameron, in his work "Silent Witness: Adelaide's statues and monuments", described the memorial as the most eye-catching statue in Adelaide, a view that was echoed by Chris Brice in 1999. More generally, the memorial is regarded as one of "Adelaide's most significant statues". The statue received national heritage listing in 1990, having been described both as a "significant landmark" and an "important piece of public sculpture of its period."
Read more about this topic: South African War Memorial (South Australia)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)