Unveiled last week, the new mural at the Waterfront in Port-of-Spain has attracted attention only for the wrong reasons.Intended to honour this country's Olympic athletes, the sculpture has drawn criticism because of embarrassing and inexcusable errors in the text that appears on it.The name of the country's first Olympic gold medallist, Hasely Crawford, is misspelt; the event at which a men's relay team won silver in 1964 is wrongly listed; and the word "medallists" is also misspelt at the top of the mural.
As disappointing as the mural itself is the attitude of the artist responsible, masman Brian MacFarlane, when the errors were pointed out to him.Mr MacFarlane blamed a printer for the mistakes and commented that "country-building and upliftment were necessary." He declared himself shocked at "so much negativity on something so minute."
Perhaps Mr MacFarlane's background as a mas designer is affecting his judgment here. The mural is not a costume that an individual has paid to wear for two days and then discarded. It is a permanent monument that cost $300,000 of taxpayers' money. The people are entitled to get value for that money.The man whose name was misspelt has been a national hero since 1976. How could a monument in honour of him and other world-class national athletes reach the point of being publicly unveiled before the error was spotted?
In a sense, however, Mr MacFarlane is right, because the mural raises other, larger questions.If it were an impressive work of art, as the athletes deserve, it might not even include a mistyped list, or literal depictions of athletes and medals and a misspelled label identifying it.The mural fits only too firmly into the recent tradition of leaden, uninspired portrayals of inspiring figures such as Brian Lara, Kitchener and Sparrow, which fail either to capture even a basic physical likeness or to transcend the merely physical.
In recent decades the country's public art has fallen far below the standards set by Pat Chu Foon in his abstract pieces or the original Gandhi statue at Kew Place, sadly vandalised; or Carlisle Chang's sculpted mural at Port-of-Spain's City Hall, Conquerabia, which dates from the early 1960s and which brilliantly captures the spirit of independence, sovereignty, and a fitting respect for history and heritage.
From previous eras, there are elegant neo-classical public sculptures of the 19th and early 20th century such as the fountain in Woodford Square and the Cenotaph in Memorial Park, which are underappreciated but thankfully still standing.A mural in honour of the country's greatest athletes should be a work of art in its own right, not merely an embellished plaque–in this case a plain plaque with no typographical errors would have been better.
If a sculpture was being commissioned, then why not commission a sculptor? Or launch a competition open to all the country's artists, professional and amateur?Judged by a panel of art experts, deliberating with the time and thoughtfulness such an undertaking deserves, such a contest would have been a shot in the arm for the fine arts that could have produced a truly fitting tribute and not simply set off a squabble.