The John Wayne Statue at John Wayne Airport

Not all contemporary statues celebrating iconic figures of American history are as dire as the recent travesty at Frederick Douglass Circle in New York perpetrated by sculptor Gabriel Koren.  During a recent trip to John Wayne Airport in Southern California, your correspondent had the pleasure of seeing the massive nine foot statue of Wayne sculpted by Robert Summers.  It is a terrific piece of work.

The airport was renamed the John Wayne Airport in 1979, shortly after Wayne’s death, and is the first airport named after an actor.  The statue was dedicated in 1982, and stands on a two-tier platform so visitors can get close to the figure. 

Artist Robert Summers (born 1940 in Cleburne, Texas) began creating figures of animals with bread dough as a toddler, and drew and sculpted consistently during his school years.  He has had no formal art training, except for a brief course mixing colors when he was 15 years old, but he managed to master a variety of mediums, including pastel, pencil and oil.  He now divides his time between painting and sculpting.  His western-themed landscapes have a pleasing command of color and a real sense of composition.

Summers also serves as an Associate Director of the Creation Evidence Museum, proving once and for all that there is not necessarily a correlation between artistic talent and intelligence.

The Wayne statue stands in the lobby of the airport’s newest terminal, gazing out into the California desert through large plate-glass walls.  It is somewhat kitschily augmented with an enormous American flag behind the figure; but, even with that misstep the effect is impressive.

Summers paid enormous attention to detail, and western film buffs would be gratified to see that he has captured Wayne’s inimitable walk and stance, let alone face and expression.  Summers is also sure to include Wayne’s belt buckle, first worn in 1948’s Red River (directed by Howard Hawks), and worn subsequently by Wayne in western films for the rest of his life.  The costume would appear (at first glance) to be the one worn by Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), and Summers accurately captures the drapery of clothes on the moving figure. 

The question of whether Wayne was an accomplished actor or not is the topic of perhaps a future post, but his impact on western films and Americana in general is mighty and immeasurable.  Perhaps no figure has done more for the modern Western film (inheriting the mantle of both Tom Mix and William S. Hart) than Wayne, though perhaps the genre needed Clint Eastwood to maintain its vitality for the Baby Boomer generation.  Searchers of western Americana would find a visit to the John Wayne Airport a worthy pilgrimage, pilgrim.

The Frederick Douglass Circle Statue

Gabriel Koren's Frederick Douglass

On September 20^th at 11:00 a.m., various notables will gather to finally unveil and inaugurate a new public space, the Frederick Douglass Circle, located at the northwest corner of New York’s Central Park.  They need not bother.

Not that Frederick Douglass is not eminently worthy of celebration -- he is.  It is just a pity that this $15.5 million travesty is the vehicle.  The whole sorry spectacle started a little over four years ago.  When the initial public space was planned, the eight-foot statue of Douglass was to stand above a huge granite quilt, forming an array of squares loaded with symbols, supposedly part of a secret code sewn into family quilts and used to aid slaves traveling the Underground Railroad.  The only problem was, the whole code-in-a-quilt story was a myth, and a rather poor one at that, and the original design had to be scrapped.  Now the statue is near a bronze wall studded with stars, which, I imagine, can only lead the more credulous children playing in the Circle to believe that Douglass worked for NASA.

Work on the Circle began in 2004, with a projected completion date of 2005.  That was then pushed back to 2008.  It was not finished, however, until 2010 – with its dedication now a year later.  Insert your own “New York minute” joke here.

The square was designed by Algernon Miller, and, all things considered, it is relatively innocuous.  He managed to work some of the quilt mythology into the paving stones themselves, though the overarching effect is still somewhat underwhelming.  It is certainly a better, more fitting, and more aesthetically pleasing refuge than the appalling Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial defacing Washington, DC, designed (if that’s the word) by Lawrence Halprin. 

Miller worked with the Studio Museum in Harlem to find a sculptor for the figure of Douglass and, here, in a nutshell, is where the project completely degrades into farce.  Out of a field of six artists, they selected Gabriel Koren, and the figure he crafted is one of nearly unparalleled horror.  The arms and legs of the venerable Douglass seem completely and utterly out of proportion – one thinks he could scratch his ankles without bending over.  The details of his hands, shoes and trousers seem sketchy, at best, and one is not sure if he is ready to address an audience, or needs to steady himself after a night out on the town.  The face and hair are amateurishly delineated – indeed, Koren makes the famed orator and abolitionist look like a dyspeptic smurf.

Though the city and state footed the bill for this $15.5 million amateur art project, the Circle and statue itself were commissioned for a mere $750,000.  (That figure may have increased once the original plans including the granite quilts were scrapped, but I have not been able to confirm that yet.)  It is currently a haven for skateboarders, tired nannies and drunks, so the investment has not been a complete waste.