Abhorrence of genocide nearly prevailed over a powerful combination of historical insensitivity, backroom politics and the love of mediocrity, but our city reps, in dramatic demonstration of nonpartisan namby-pamby-ism, voted to dispose of another $900,000-plus from the city's malnourished budget and saddle El Paso forever with the biggest and dopiest equestrian statue on Earth.
Equally
unfortunate as the project's survival of a politically righteous challenge,
the attending debate reinforced certain fallacies. In an attempt to maintain
an aura of civility, those who opposed the inclusion of Oñate deemed
it necessary to almost always qualify their objections with respectful nods
to the talents of John Houser and the artistic, if not historic, merits of
the project.
Please.
The only artistic attribute Houser's statue imparts is that it's a visibly recognizable representation in bronze of a man with a pointy beard dressed in conquistador garb, perched upon a rearing horse with engorged testicles, but beyond that, it has no relationship to anything generally associated with art. There's nothing transformative or contemplative about it; it certainly is not an articulation of the human spirit; it's stiff; it's unexpressive; it's not even particularly informative. It looks as if its maker was relieved just to have assembled its pieces.
In a project this size, artistic merit sometimes might be measured simply by the successful co-ordination of its conclusion, but Houser comes up lacking by even this simple criteria. Poorly executed, years behind schedule, fabulously over budget -- let's face it: the project is a bust, and Houser lacks both the artistic and professional capacity to fulfill it without the endless and extortionate funding that has been lavished on him.
Jeffrey Shepherd of the Department of History at UTEP pointed out in a letter to The El Paso Times earlier this week that Oñate was charged with ineptitude and corruption, and a brief ride in the Way-Back Machine reveals that the same charges might also be leveled at Houser.
On a sleepy El Paso Saturday afternoon in the late 1980's, The Herald-Post ran a small sidebar of a press release from the short-lived and ill-fated Tax Increment Finance Board that had been authorized with the oversight of one-in-a-series of downtown revitalization efforts. It announced that guidelines for the funding of public arts projects within the TIF district were available to artists, and applications would be due a couple of weeks later. It was only a couple of weeks after that the TIF board announced they would be funding the only application it received -- the construction of a downtown sculpture foundry in which a series of twelve statues of prominent figures from El Paso's history would be cast by a renowned sculptor named John Houser. The proposal requested one million of our tax dollars to be leveraged against 2.7 million privately raised dollars. The ensuing sculptures would be placed throughout the TIF district and would be a huge boon to tourism, while the foundry would create jobs and, through ongoing commercial operations, would generate future tax revenues, a requirement of all projects funded by the TIF.
Almost immediately after the project was announced, it was realized that Downtown El Paso is not zoned for industry and the statues would have to be manufactured elsewhere. Just as quickly, an organized group of boosters who called themselves "The Friends of the XII Travelers" sprouted up and began lobbying most aggressively for the project's support. The dearth of the foundry was a mere detail, this coterie contended. Twelve sculptures by such a renowned sculptor as Houser would certainly draw the attention of tout le monde and turn our fair burg into a world-class tourist mecca, bursting with sales-tax revenues from all the tee-shirts and snow-cones that would be sold.
Meanwhile, natives of the local arts community began stirring and asking some questions about the selection process. Why wasn't competition solicited before a million dollar plus commission was awarded to a single artist, and why wasn't more time made available so that other artists might have applied? How was it that the TIF Board -- comprised of politicians and school board and hospital administrators -- thought itself qualified to make a major million dollar commitment to a public art project without the advice and consultation of any arts professionals? And, by the way, who is John Houser? He wasn't an El Paso artist; how was it that an out-of-towner could put together a complex application to a Tax Increment Finance District so quickly? Might he have had help from someone on or close to the TIF Board? Would that have been kosher?
A little digging into his background revealed Houser had no particular experience or qualifications for receiving such a large commission. His work wasn't represented in a single museum or gallery anywhere in the world, he had never had an exhibit and he had never been reviewed in any journals. He mostly sold small bronzes of eagles and Indians looking off to the horizon at outdoor fairs, the kind of artwork often placed at the end of a row of books so they don't tip over. His only experience in public art making was a commission he received from a University of Arizona alumna to construct a statue that was to be donated to the school, but upon completion, the Board of Regents flatly rejected the thing. After a group of patrons insisted, they finally relented and placed it behind the basketball gymnasium. Hardly the stuff that renown is made of.
Something clearly stank about the deal, and enough of a clamor erupted that Mayor Suzie Azar appointed an advisory committee comprised of arts professionals, patrons, university professors and Downtown businessmen to evaluate the travelers project and report on its suitability. As the project was (and still is) being supported by some well-heeled PaseZos, the committee diplomatically concluded that since the project no longer met TIF qualifications for funding, it should not receive any city money, but since it was such an admirable undertaking, it should be supported in spirit, and it then recommended alternative methods of funding.
Houser and his supporters were outraged. They accused the mayor of artistic interference, insisting an obligation had been made, and they rejected the very notion that the project be subjected to review by a group of "elitists." They claimed that they had a broad base of community support, and in a slice of very delicious irony, the Friends of the XII Travelers published a newsletter in which it accused critics of the project of being racist.
Houser persevered and the project proceeded, but not quite as he had pledged. Two years after the project began, it was revealed that of the $2.7 million that was going to be raised privately, the Friends of the Travelers had theretofore raised a total of $3800 (0.14%), and when challenged about this, they arrogantly replied that the contract said only that $2.7 million would be raised, it didn't specify by whom. It wasn't their obligation, they said.
With basically only the use of city funds, Houser finally got the first of the statues built, a clumsy rendition of Fray García toting a cross. In keeping with the sagacity of the project as a whole, Houser wasn't aware that he couldn't use public money to promote religion, so he had to cut the top of the cross off, leaving us -- and all the tourists that have come to see it -- to ponder the sight of a bronze 15 foot high man in a robe carrying a 2x4 up the road, apparently on his way home from Home Depot.
Flush with the triumph of this first endeavor, Houser no longer felt constrained by the terms of the original plan, and, as we're all painfully aware, he and his committee unilaterally decided that the next statue, instead of being only 15' tall, should be of gargantuan proportion. They didn't feel that a need to consult with their primary patron -- the city of El Paso -- about this project-altering magnification because the contract that had been signed with the city did not specify a maximum size. Minor details like cost could be damned, or covered by the city.
Actually, Houser had never felt limited by the conditions of the original plan. Years earlier, in the January, 1990 issue of a Santa Fe magazine called "Art-Talk", he's quoted as saying that by the time all twelve statues were completed, the project will have cost over $5 million and it would be the most expensive sculptural commission on record in the United States, something else of which he forgot to inform the city.
In the same interview he said it would take 8-10 years to cast all12 of
the statues, but now, 13 years after that interview, only the laughably botched
Fray García statue has been placed, and his supporters have just begged
another $900,000-plus of precious tax money to complete, sometime in the next
three or four years, merely the second of his 12 travelers.
Meanwhile, the city's 2% for the arts program has been eliminated, $600,000
in city funding for a portion of the restoration of the Plaza Theater is under
assault and the city's Arts and Cultural Department had its budget slashed
by $700,000. The latter is going to have an immediate adverse effect on every
single solitary, already struggling non-profit arts organization in town,
negatively impacting hundreds of artists and arts professionals and diminishing
the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of area residents. The city
has other priorities, we've been told.
One of those priorities seems to be to offend a great many residents of Mexico and the Southwestern United States by glamorizing a disgraced historical figure with a poorly conceived, over-priced, disproportionately gigantic, ostentatiously situated, and profoundly inelegant erection by an unaccomplished, second-rate talent who's been living for years in Mexico City on our dime while arrogantly refusing any artistic or fiduciary oversight because 16 years ago a small group of municipal administrators with no experience or understanding of the complexities of the selection and funding of public art projects agreed to underwrite it behind closed doors, without public input or forethought.
It's degrading that after all this time and wasted money, this total dud of an endeavor should still be dividing our community; but it's not nearly as embarrassing as it will be when the damn thing is up. Just as its proponents wish, it's going to be the emblematic icon of El Paso, and as such it's shameful that we will have allowed ourselves to be represented in perpetuity by something so much duller and lifeless than our beloved city really is.
But, hey . . . don't get me started.
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Richard Baron is a writer, photographer and long-time arts activist who lives in El Paso. He can be reached at rbaron47@hotmail.com.
