''Atlas'' is a bronze statue in

Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span th ...

, within the International Building's courtyard, in Midtown Manhattan in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. It is across Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick's Cathedral. The sculpture depicts the ancient Greek Titan

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geograp ...

holding the heavens on his shoulders. ''Atlas'' was created by the sculptor Lee Lawrie with the help of

Rene Paul Chambellan Rene Paul Chambellan (September 15, 1893 – November 29, 1955) was an American sculptor who specialized in architectural sculpture. He was also one of the foremost practitioners of what was then called the "French Modern Style" and has subseque ...

and was installed in 1937. The sculpture is in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style of Rockefeller Center. The figure of Atlas in the sculpture is tall, while the entire statue is tall. It weighs , and is the largest sculpture at Rockefeller Center. Atlas is depicted carrying the celestial vault on his shoulders. The north-south axis of the armillary sphere on his shoulders points towards the

North Star Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris ( Latinized to ''Alpha Ursae Minoris'') and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude tha ...

's position relative to New York City. The statue stands on one muscular leg atop a small stone pedestal, whose corner faces Fifth Avenue.

In popular culture

The piece has since been appropriated as a symbol of the Objectivist movement and has been associated with Ayn Rand's novel '' Atlas Shrugged'' (1957). It has been featured in almost every episode of the television series '' 30 Rock'', appearing in numerous

establishing shot An establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes, the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects. It is generally a long or extreme-long shot at the beginning of ...

s depicting the

30 Rockefeller Plaza 30 Rockefeller Plaza (officially the Comcast Building; formerly RCA Building and GE Building) is a skyscraper that forms the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Completed in 1933, the 66-s ...

building, where the series is set. Most Rainforest Cafe locations have a statue resembling this one in a waterfall with a fountain, with the words "Rescue the Rainforest" in green neon letters across the equator of the globe. Ridley Scott cited the sculpture as the aesthetic inspiration for the character "Mother," on HBO Max's '' Raised by Wolves''.

References

External links

''Atlas'' (sculpture)
{{Rockefeller Center 1937 establishments in New York City 1937 sculptures Art Deco sculptures and memorials Bronze sculptures in Manhattan Buildings and structures completed in 1937 Nude sculptures in New York (state) Outdoor sculptures in Manhattan Rockefeller Center Sculptures of Greek gods Statues in New York City Atlas (mythology)

In popular culture

See also

References

External links