Some people take art criticism a little too far

From the Bamiyan Buddhas to Mount Rushmore and the effigies of Communist leaders: a brief history of sculptures.

In Australia, the issue has been too many Cooks spoiling our historic broth, with attacks on effigies of the English explorer. Credit: iStock

Some people take art criticism a little too far. Take the Taliban’s 2001 dynamiting of that most monumental of monuments – two 6th century Buddhas carved into a cliff in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley. Or ISIS in 2015, damaging every ancient statue they could find – including the Winged Bull of Nineveh near Mosul in Iraq. Not well educated in either good manners or artistic matters, ISIS also took time off from beheading humans to decapitate plaster casts in captured museums.

Remember the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s monstrous statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square? Neither a great loss to art history nor a recent development. Egyptian pharaohs regularly defaced (literally the faces) of predecessors. And imagine the vast Russian junkyards that must exist to house redundant sculptures of Lenin. Stalins? They went to the scrapyard decades before – more serried ranks of them than China’s terracotta warriors.

Meanwhile, in London’s Highgate Cemetery, the sculpture of Karl Marx has suffered several attacks. I suspect Gerard Henderson, who may have been inspired by fellow citizen Laszlo Toth. Hungarian-born Australian Laszlo was a geologist by trade who, extrapolating from a lifetime spent banging at rocks with a hammer, entered the Vatican in 1972 and proceeded to do a Whelan-the-Wrecker on Michelangelo’s Pieta. Took decades to repair, as did poor mad Laszlo. He died in Sydney in 2012.

Not that the Vatican should complain, given its record in attacking scores of statues in its collection. As I’ve noted previously, in a huge inside job every classical nude, Greek and Roman, had its penis hammered off in an orgy of prudery. The wounds were concealed with crudely affixed plaster fig leaves, the maimed members now locked in the Vatican vaults. Seems the Catholic Church has some problems with human sexuality.

Madame Tussauds has handled historical changes with tact. When a celebrity runs out of time, his/her head is recycled. The wax is melted down and, lo and behold, it morphs into a new model. The same could be done with bronze. Stone is more problematic. Bigger than Bamiyan’s Buddhas are Mount Rushmore’s presidents – and it wouldn’t have been surprising if Trump had issued an ultimatum: “Add me to it or I’ll blow it up.” Surely all will be revealed in a new book by another disenchanted member of Donald’s dilapidated dynasty.

In the Failed State of the US, still haemorrhaging from its civil wars, there have been countless battles royal over statues of Confederate heroes. Black Lives Matter campaigners have led huge protests against statues of racists and slave-owners from the Deep South to London – and even in Oxford University dignified rioters demanded the toppling of imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

In Australia, the issue has been too many Cooks spoiling our historic broth, with attacks on effigies of the English explorer. There are a few Cookies I’d like to de-pedestal, but for a different reason. Quite apart from the pain they cause many Indigenous Australians, they’re artistically offensive. Clunky, crappy statues that should be banned. I make no comment on the new bronze of Princess Di.

P.S. It seems political leaders are better off being preserved in embalming fluid than in bronze. Look at Lenin, still drowsing in Red Square, at Mao in Tiananmen Square and Ho in Hanoi. I’m crowdfunding a plan to embalm our current crop. Immediately. And perhaps the National Portrait Gallery could switch from paintings to picklings.