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HUMPTY DUMPY SAT ON A WALL,
I have problems with
people in power who choose to be physically absurd; it's my visual
perspective! Ariel Sharon for that reason alone is hard for me to
watch or listen to with any respect. For many other reasons I just
can't muster an affinity for the man. I feel his country in modern
terms is a place founded on thousands of years of tradition but
with no real rights to their current geographical location. That
is other then they were and are successful as a military force in
suppressing the Palestinian peoples and keeping the surrounding
Arab countries at bay. Carving out what 'they feel' is a divinely
and historically promised land. The rational is the loss
of six million Jews out of the 50 plus million who died during World
War II. That was a huge loss to their Diaspora. But did it warrant
the eviction and suppression of the Palestinians? Do we give back
all the world's holy lands to the original aboriginal inhabitants
who first populated them? Should we give Mexico back to the Aztecs?
Or old Armenia back to the Armenians?
Recently, a friend commented, "The Jewish survivors of World
War II should have been awarded Bavaria." Ironically it seems
much more appropriate after what Nazi Germany did to the European
Jews.
It, is however, a mute point at this time; Israel 'is' and 'will
be'!
But, Sharon is a metaphor
for what I see as greedy and selfish about hard line Israelis! He
looks the part and has demonstrated his excessive appetites for
many years. Since his early adulthood he has been a ruthless warrior
holding vengeance and brutality as his motto. No one can deny the
inhuman counter plays of the Arab and Palestinian extremists to
Israel's residence in this holy land. But the "eye
for an eye" mentality does not work, and it never has.
In the long term it merely propagates further hatred and violence
ultimately solving nothing.
My stylized diorama/sculpture
titled "Humpty Dumpy sat on a wall," is
a cynical tribute to Ariel Sharon and his concept of the walling
off of Jews and Palestinians so as to protect his people and force
peace. Walls fall and don't really keep peoples apart or separate
unless they choose to be so. Every wall of repression has a weakness
and becomes a symbol fostering hatred and multiplying resistance.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1999, the Mongols got through the many walls
built in there paths to conquer most of the known world, and the
barbed wire electrified fences of the Nazi concentration camps are
now reminders and a tribute to the strength and will of the survivors
of those monstrous times. How soon we dismiss the lessons of the
past!
As the nursery rhyme
says after Humpty falls, "all the King's horses and all the
King's men couldn't put Humpty together again!"
In the sculpture Sharon,
and his wall, rest on a cut out shape in the form of the West Bank
of Israel. This of course is where so much of the terror and aggression
takes place in the struggle between Israel and its Palestinian population.
The primary eight cities of Jerusalem, Ram Allah, Janin, Hebron
and the others are indicated. The wall I use is exaggerated and
inaccurate in its positioning. I took artistic license in its placement
and it is solely intended to support the stylized naked Sharon while
his wall begins to collapse under his excessive unhealthy girth.
Pringles, I was
told were Sharon's favorite snack food! This was told to me by a
major network television news person when he saw the figure I was
modeling in clay for this piece. Reportedly, my friend said Sharon
personally downs a whole container of the snack food at one time.
I have eaten my fair share of Pringles and can not resist them either.
Nor could I resist their inclusion representing gluttony in this
sculpture.
The repeated heads cascading out of the chips can, of course, were
fashioned after Edoard Munch's famous "Scream" paintings.
They are intended to add to the black humor of what I truly hope
is a darkly humorous and critical portrait of a sad mean-hearted
man.
After all, you are what
you eat!
Frank Williams,
April, 2005
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