Sylvester Stallone in Art & Celebrity (2003)
Excerpts from John A. Walker’s now-classic book.
Sylvester Stallone (b. 1946, New York, aka "The Italian Stallion") became a world-famous movie star during the 1970s and 1980s for his action-man roles as Rocky the boxer and Rambo the Vietnam veteran. He currently lives in Beverly Hills but during the 1990s, he occupied a large mansion and estate in Miami worth $16 million. In 1997, Stallone’s neo-classical-style villa overlooking Biscayne Bay was profiled by the glossy magazine Architectural Digest. [1] Stallone has a passion for architecture and building and spent a small fortune remodelling the mansion. He was inspired by the baroque fantasies of Gianni Versace (1946-1997), the Italian fashion designer to the stars (and celebrity murder victim), a friend of his who had a home in South Beach Miami, and by interiors seen in Paris and Venice. Stallone was seeking "warmth, boldness, pageantry and over-the-top myth" and told his Italian designer Massimo Papiri to "Rococo me to the max".
Photographs by Dan Forer revealed lavishly decorated interiors with allegorical ceiling frescos, ornate chandeliers and furniture, and many paintings and sculptures. Sylvester Stallone’s taste in art is eclectic: his collection included paintings by the nineteenth-century academic artists William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Luis Ricardo Faléro, the British painter Francis Bacon, the American painters LeRoy Neiman and Andy Warhol (both portraits of Stallone), and sculptures by Robert Graham, marbles of nude females by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, and a bronze statue of Eve by Auguste Rodin. Antique stone statuary was distributed among the tropical vegetation in the extensive grounds and next to the swimming pool was a bronze figure of Stallone as Rocky Balboa with one arm raised. The latter was created by De L’Esprie, an American sculptress who has received commissions from several movie stars.
Another sculpture of Rocky, this time with both arms raised, was
created in 1980 as a film prop. It merits a digression because, although it represented a fictional character, it became a controversial public sculpture. In Rocky I & II, the boxer runs up the steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and raises his arms in triumph. In Rocky III (1982), a sculpture commemorating the triumphal moment is donated to the city and placed in front of the museum. Sylvester Stallone’s biographer Frank Sanello reports:
When Stallone decided to let life imitate his art and donate the $60,000 statue by renowned sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg [b. 1943, a Colorado sculptor of athletes and public monuments], the City Fathers thought the gift was a publicity stunt, considered the statue kitsch, and told Stallone to take it back. The sculpture ended up unceremoniously lashed to a tree in the backyard of his Malibu home until other residents of the City of Brotherly Love mounted a drive to get their "Rocky" back. A compromise was achieved. Schomberg’s statue ended up in front of Philadelphia’s Spectrum, a hockey, basketball and boxing venue. Embarrassed by the backlash against its good taste, the city’s Art Commission allowed the sculpture to remain in front of the art museum during the first two months of Rocky III’s release ... [2]
Sylvester Stallone in Art & celebrity: 1 | 2
References:
[1] Judith Thurman. "Sylvester Stallone: Life on the grand scale for the actor in Miami". Architectural Digest, Vol. 54, No. 11 (November 1997), pp. 212-21, 280-2, plus front cover.
[2] Frank Sanello. Stallone: A rocky life. (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream Publishing, 1998), pp. 121-2.
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