Posted by pancho from ? (64.79.4.3) on Saturday, March 02, 2002 at 4:33AM :
In Reply to: Other ethnic groups and Monuments posted by Melody from sankhya2.math.ualberta.ca (129.128.207.126) on Saturday, March 02, 2002 at 1:01AM :
Melody dear...do you think if there was any honorable way to do it I wouldn't? If I were as selfish and as greedy and as concerned only for myself as these people insist, do you think I or any sculptor wouldn't trip all over himself to have a piece of his accepted by the one city in this entire country that has the grandest and finest public art collection? Do you think if I were the greedy bastard I am I wouldn't have kissed up to John and Let Atour and Janey do whatever they wanted just so I could get MONEY for the Hammurabi...or stayed FRIENDS with that Jackster...so she would buy another $100,000 worth of sculpture from me? What have I accomplished except to seem to have destroyed my career and family and monuments and the work of a lifetime? But I tell you what...the work and the life and the family would be meaningless if I conformed to what these pygmies want to make of this Heritage until it sinks under the weight of their mediocrity.
For 14 years I've been working on the Shumirum...twice I thought we were there, twice I got Chicago to offer to pay for the base and the installation and provide city wide advertising. I tell you, the forces working in this community to humiliate and belittle us JUST so they can dabble in Assyriandoodleisms in their spare time, are powerful and powerfully stupid.
In Manhattan, down by Wall Street, in the plaza of a most lovely Armenian Church there has been a monument to the Armenian genocide for years, since the 1930's. It consists of an eight foot tall bronze ROOSTER! What that has to do with genocide I don't know. Imagine if I had made such a thing for Assrins!
-- pancho
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