statuomania

English

Etymology

statue +‎ -o- +‎ -mania

Noun

statuomania (uncountable)

1. (chiefly historical) An obsession with putting up statues, especially with reference to France. [from 19th c.]
   • 1882, “Contemporary Life and Thought in France”, in The Contemporary Review‎^[1], July-December 1882 edition, volume 42, London: Ibister and Company Limited, translation of original by Gabriel Monod, published 1882, page 656:

     To carry this out would not be difficult with a people so deeply imbued with veneration for the dead, amongst whom Positivism seeks to replace the forms of religious worship by honours rendered to the great, and with whom for some time past the rage for statues, now being erected all over France, seems to be degenerating into a "statuomania."

   • 1983, Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition:

     The major characteristic of French ‘statuomania’ was its democracy, anticipating that of the war memorials after 1914-18.

   • 1998, Pim D Boer, translated by Arnold J Pomerans, History as a Profession, page 111:

     On the left too voices were raised against this ‘statuomania’: would it not be far better to spend all that money on bread for the poor?

   • 2007, Nancy M Wingfield, Flag Wars and Stone Saints:

     The statues of Joseph II, together with the Czech program of statue production in the same era, represent variants of the well-known French "statuomania" that was so pervasive in the late nineteenth century [...].