A Christmas Carol
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The central figure of Laocoön served as loose inspiration for the Indian in Horatio Greenough's The Rescue (1837-50) which stood before the east facade of the United States Capitol for over 100 years.
Near the end of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge comments that he was "making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his stockings" which is a direct reference to the statue of Laocoön since Scrooge is in such a rush to get dressed that he becomes entangled in his clothes.
In 1910 the critic Irving Babbitt used the title The New Laokoon: An Essay on the Confusion of the Arts for an essay on contemporary culture at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1940 Clement Greenberg adapted the concept for his own essay entitled Towards a Newer Laocoön in which he argued that abstract art now provided an ideal for artists to measure their work against, and this title was copied by a exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute which exhibited work by modern artists influenced by the sculpture.
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