'A weak piece of work'
published: Wednesday | August 20, 2003

THE EDITOR, Sir:

I returned to Jamaica recently and was initially caught up with the focus and the intensity of the controversy surrounding the Emancipation Park statue. Having now taken the time to observe at close hand the "offending" statue, my overriding impression is that as a work of art commissioned to reflect a specific theme the statue itself is technically and artistically a weak piece of work. Shortly after the death of Bob Marley, Christopher Gonzales was commissioned to create a commemorative statue. The statue was imbued with expressionistic and symbolic features and I defended the statue in this newspaper. The statue did not have a photographic resemblance to Bob (a recently departed pop and cultural icon) thus making it unacceptable to many people. However, as art, the statue had artistic merit and it captured some of Bob's inner qualities. Neville Garrick's cover design for Bob's Uprising album is another example of this approach to artistic representation. The emancipation statue appears to have only controversy going for it. The work is a disproportionate piece of realism, there is no discernible relationship between the two and their surroundings, the body language and facial expression depict bland neutrality. Bearing in mind that there is a school of art only a few kilometres from the park several questions arise:

How did such a technically weak piece make it through the selection process? How did the selection committee allow themselves to be convinced that a) the statue was an effective depiction of emancipation b) that the piece would be accepted by the majority of its intended audience?

Who selected the selection panel?

There is a larger controversy beyond the nakedness of the two figures and that is how have we been side-tracked into not focusing on the overall ineffectiveness of the statue?

I am, etc.,

HUGH STULTZ

Mandeville

P.O. Box 353

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