Crafting a Lasting Heritage: Sculptures of Historical Figures | Perspective 

Ever since "discovering" Waldemar Januszczak during quarantine, I've been hungrily gobbling up his art films, devouring them daily. With this channel, I feel I've hit the motherlode! Woohoo!!

I started watching the Perspective channel for the sake of learning about Art around the world, but I was in for a big surprise, one of the best Art History storytellers, Big Waldemar Januszczak!! Now I can't go to sleep without seeing and hearing his charismatic knowledge on some topic that involves Art. -Thanks for the upload, Keep them coming...

"Mount Rushmore is seen by many as a sculptural shrine to American values, but it was actually built to be a tourist attraction" I don't know man, building something massive purely to get people to give you money actually seems like a pretty good representation of American values to me

Dear Waldemar your sense of humour and irreverence combined with the immense knowledge of the art history are the secret ingredients that made your videos addictive to me. I can't stop watching them. Thank you so much for making them. I learn and laugh at the same time.

This is the best host I have ever seen, engaging, intelligent, witty, educational without being patronizing and so FUNNY!

I can't get enough of this host and the series on art history that he so skillfully presents.

LOVE LOVE LOVE The host - Been following him for A LONG time!!! Great to see you back amazing sir!!! Waldemar Januszczak you are so entertaining!!!

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

From Lithuania to Easter Island it's amazing how they put these together. Waldemar is amazing and charismatic, the depth and breadth of his knowledge of all eras and medium's of art. So glad they've put these together in one place for us to enjoy.

How I wish you had been one of my art professors way back when. You have so many gifts, your knowledge, your passion, your charisma, and your amazing ability to capture people's attention with fantastic stories. I've missed you. Stay safe and happy

The host is great, a fine scholar able to communicate with an audience that does not necessarily knows the history of art.

Waldemar Januszczak is an international treasure.

"If you look like him, but you want to come across like him, there's no use relying on nature...she's already let you down." HAhahahhhaaha I love this guy

As a passionate lover and admirer of sculpture and student of art, this was an homage to the art unlike anything I've ever seen. Bringing forth the contrasting political sides of what sculpture really is, and how it affects people, is a monument to your brilliance as a documentary maker. Bravo Waldemar! When shall we have a monument to you? You deserve one! Maybe we should have an award like the "Oscar" for best documentary, called "The Waldemar"!

For all the bombast - much of which is amusing - this man makes art history come alive! Brilliant

I hope Waldemar never ever stops making videos. I could watch nothing but this forever

Waldemar, your documentaries are always so captivating, I think, I love you! :)

Waldemar is the best

Waldemar is a wonderful presenter. Great storytelling, fantastic docu series.

I love history. I've watched Waldemar's documentaries for years on PBS and enjoy them so much! He is the 1st Art Historian that I felt was speaking to everyone in the average Joe's language. I'm so excited to have found this channel

This show is art in itself. I adore the humor.

I just love the music in these beautiful documentaries they add so much to the brilliance and enjoyment .

Waldemar Januszczak is The Best!!!!

I want to be added to the list of fans of Waldemar Januszczak! His presentations teach us aspects of art that make art so relevant and entertaining...hooked!

This guy is amazing in telling stories

Januszczak is a very engaging presenter. Sometimes far-fetched, but fun. He very confidently "explains" Easter Island religion, culture, and history with theories that are pretty odd (I've seen lots of documentaries and read a fair bit, and no one ever said the statues were slid down a mountainside). He confidently tells us Goliath was over 10' tall, when most scholars do the math and come up with 9'9". So I take his assertions with some skepticism till I can check them, but meanwhile I really enjoy his presentations.

I love Waldemar’s dig at Mount Rushmore.

17:45 "Look at that huuuuuuuge right hand" yes sir we are all looking at that hand! 😲

I laughed so hard there were tears...genius.

Love this series .. The commentary by Waldemar Januszczak ... so very enlightening and enjoyable.

Excellent writing-educational, quirky, transporting. Thank you.

Waldemar Januszczak the best there is!

This is such an excellent series. Bravo!

my favorite art programme!

Regarding the part on Easter Island, there is a great video from the "Fall of Civilizations Podcast" called "Where Giants Walked" that talks about how the civilization of that island once was great and flourishing, but then, as many do, it fell. It also talks more about the big statues and what they meant to the people. Its a little long but well worth it. Link is here, ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7j08gxUcBgc.html

Love this channel. It gives a different perspective than conventional art history. Waldemar is so insightful and appears so approachable, unlike the typical ivory tower academic. Thank you.

Stumbling upon Mr Janusczcak was a stroke of great fortune - this chap is really brilliant - super sharp wit , creative genius of presentation - I find myself laughing on a continual basis - were I had been so fortunate to have had him as a school teacher - he shines in dramatics , humor , brilliant verbal delivery with a delightfully informative societal contextual framewrk of presentation - allways a Bravo to this chap !☺ - he's funnier than Maggie Smith - and she's pretty damned funny 😳☺

One of the most perfect sculptures in history and he finds three things wrong with it, that is hilarious

Seems like a nice show they squeeze in between the commercial main event.

"When Smashing monuments, save the pedestals, they always come in handy." Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

excellent and pleasurable documentary...

Throwing that rock over the don't throw rocks sign at 3:05. I mean i like interesting history but this simple act has really endeared me to this presenter!

37:23 now that's art!

This guy always seems to be climbing and climbing, and huffing and puffing! I love spending an evening with Waldy.😊

It is informative and entertaining, thank you.

What a great work!!!

Very entertaining. "Drop kick me Jesus through the goal post of life", what a verse in that song. Thanks for posting.

oooh waldemar ... makes interesting topics exciting and really interesting!

So irreverent. So knowledgeable. So funny. Thanks for teaching me art history even better than any of my MFA courses.

Wow! From Easter Island to a megachurch. This guy gets around! Gotta love him.

I love this in every way!

My friends, if you ever are in Seattle WA, there is a 16=foot-tall bronze statue of Lenin in the little neighborhood of Fremont. "He" was brought there by a collector who died before plans for display could be completed. When I saw the statue, it was gazing directly-- and wistfully?-- at a taco joint. Wikipedia reports that "the Lenin statue has often been decorated, appropriated, or vandalized with various intentions, both whimsical and serious." Which totally supports the conclusion of this fine video.

So fun thing that's come out since this documentary: the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island didn't cut down trees to move the moai. Instead they used ropes and leverage to rock the moai back and forth enough so they could "walk" it from the quarry to the beaches. The fallen moai are mostly failed attempts to reach the shore.

Brilliant! I had put this “episode” to the side, and reluctantly turned to it months later, not convinced that I had much interest in gigantesque statues of people such as Stalin - but it turned out to be fascinating. Waldemar steps out of his artistic skin and addresses politics, sharply and unforgivingly. From ancient Greece to So. Dakota, humans have never given up their appetite for grandeur, the more undeserved the better. A little humility would behoove us. Perhaps we’ll acquire it by the time we hit a new planet - or do you think it’s inevitable?

Perfect Videography

Brilliantly done!! Thanks for such an informative and satirical programme!! Just the tonic we need in lockdown to keep a good perspective on things!!! I suppose leaders would say: "go large or go home...!!" I wonder if Donald Trump ever saw this programme?????

Amazing!

I love your style compadre 🙏

He’s BRILLIANT... very gifted! Makes it fun to learn and wanting more!!!🙋‼️✌🏾😂

Brilliant!

Another interesting programme almost destroyed by too many bloody adverts!

Must watch.

Not only do bigger statues make your detractors madder, but also the bigger the statue the bigger the statement made by tearing them down.

Amazing.

I'm now all enamoured with Waldemar. So called bitten by the bug. He's so gregarious n is full of charisma. Full of British humour. Haha

Thanks for the very entertaining perspective on sculptures, specially David.

The only thing that could have been added IMHO is the Japanese affection for "non-sculptures" so to speak, that is just beautiful pieces of rock that they display in places of honour in their garden. (It's probably a Chinese idea to start with, but the Japanese are better at keeping up traditions I think.) I was reminded of that tradition when Valdemar mentioned the Anti-Crazy-Horse people who felt the mountain was more beautiful before this guy started blowing it up.

Do we have this documentary with french subtitles ?

Best host ever

Nice Art Sir. I ve subscribed.

I respected him throwing that rock right in front of the sign 3:06

All these sculptures have very chiselled features. 😄

love it all, well done, but less ads would be nice

Walderma !!!! What can I say. Simply brilliant & honest !

I have watched this narrator with pleasure, never able to catch his name but when he speaks everyone listens. JohnnyMike

There was Franklin Roosevelt who served two terms during the most tumultuous world war in a wheelchair due to polio...

Love it, love it, love it - why I haven't known this before - shame on me!

From 'Standing Bare' to 'David', they uncover it all.

Nice.

Waldemar is the best 🔥🔥🔥.....the Soviet songs 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Where Waldemar goes, I go.

As humans we are insignificant, hence the need to create idols and deify humans

Love how he keeps joking about Midwest taste of art

40:47 The real-life Crazy Horse monument doesn’t appear to match up with the mock-up. The opening in the mountain looks too far over to the right. (Maybe it doesn’t matter because it’s difficult to imagine that the monument will ever be completed.)

Here in the USA of 2020, our petulant juvenile-in-chief unironically says he wants his mug on Mt. Rushmore. The curator told him, sorry, there's no more room.

Only foreigners ever bother to go see those sculptures! By the way, did you measure your output. Remember, intake and output should roughly be the same. Don't eat too much salt. Take lasix if necessary. The original sculpture of the David is in the Accademia Gallery of Florence. The second copy of the David is located in Piazza della Signoria (Duomo Square), just opposite the Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace). The third copy is in the middle of Piazzale Michelangelo.

34:00 "Throw it here! I'm open!"

The power of Wiley Waldy is supernatural. Waldy is a brilliant arty-farty freak.

When I was a boy, I imagined the Moai were a direct product of tribes of central and south Americans who fled to the island escaping the sacrificial death cults that were hunting people for appeasement to the gods. This would have been done on anything from great rafts, canoes or anything that was seaworthy. On their arrival, Easter Islanders erected these statues as a warning to invading tribes from the continent who might think the Moai were giant warriors. The size of the statues might give invaders a second thought partly because of their mysterious appearance and because of their shear size [ie: not transportable by canoe]. As time went by and the land was depleted of resources, a rebellion may have occurred and the looming threat of anihilation, to give the remaining tribe a faint, if not an entirely rational hope of access back to south and or central America. All this, even if it meant capture and even certain death by removing the visual threat to invasion as they may have seen it , in the Moai.....possibly a more preferable option than a slow lingering death from starvation and feuding......but then, I was just a boy.

Massive entertainment 👌 👏 All interesting and different What a story - the birdman. Drowning Jesus! Crazy horse!!

The statue of David is absolutely proportional. There is a family of Italians who's bodily proportions are exactly the same as David's. I have seen a boy just like him (the statue of David) with my own eyes.

Prima!

Please do a film on surrealism!

Fantastic episode!

Hi, reformed scholar here. I understood it to be that the trees on Easter Island disappeared during a drought, and the men disappeared to slavers, taking their oral history with them. So I guess I need citations. Thanks though; I love the vids.

A dig at the mid-west, when those carving are in the west

Terrific! Was the calendar picture at about 37mins really necessary?🙄

You got to get your name in the title ! New glasses and a hair cut ,. I missed this for 30 days or more , great ! Goode ! An glorious ! More longer !

"...there stood, for over a thousand years, a colossal statue of the Emperor Nero." That's not what Wikipedia says. According to Wikipedia, the statue was built between 64 and 68 A.D., and was last mentioned in the Chronography of 354 A.D., or possibly in a poem by Bede (c. 672-735), who wrote: "As long as the Colossus stands, Rome will stand, when the Colossus falls, Rome will also fall, when Rome falls, so falls the world." That still doesn't mean that the statue lasted for a thousand years.

People need to build a lot of scaffolding in order to have the perspective of Waldemar Januszczak.