Statuomania

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."

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

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?

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 [...].