The National Commission on Culture
and the Arts (NCCA) has opposed a proposal by Rep. Amado Bagatsing to carefully
reposition the statue of Dr. Jose Rizal by 180 degrees so that photos taken of
the work of Swiss sculptor Richard Kissling would not have the Torre de Manila
“photo-bomber” in the frame.
The NCCA’s knee-jerk thumbing down
of a perfectly sound proposal by Bagatsing exposed the commission’s tunnel
vision and one-track mind to just destroy the condominium tower, which is
already nearing completion when its construction was ordered stopped by the
Supreme Court.
Which is easier done, to commission
experts to do the repositioning of the Rizal statue or to demolish a 46-storey
building? Where’s our country’s sense of proportion in resolving a problem of
mere aesthetics through the destruction of an admittedly controversial
building.
One needs only use Google to know
that the repositioning and even relocation of statues as equally important as
Rizal’s have been done and are being done all over the world. It’s not like
Bagatsing’s proposal is to relocate the monument as
it is to reposition Rizal so that he would be facing Taft Avenue instead
of Roxas Boulevard.
Instead of looking towards the
garbage-polluted waters of Manila de Bay, Rizal would then be looking towards
the center of Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, a position for which
many patriotic symbolism may be inferred.
The NCCA should welcome any and all proposals
on how to resolve the photo-bombing problem caused by Torre de Manila, instead
of just opposing a remedy such as the one proposed by the lawmaker.
As President Aquino’s favorite line
goes: “It’s easy to criticize without offering a solution.”
Contrary to popular belief, the
Rizal monument in Luneta was not made by a Filipino artist. The design was the
work of Swiss sculptor named Richard Kissling who won second prize in an art
competition that was held in 1907 to find the best scale model for the future
Rizal monument. The first prize went to Italian sculptor Carlo Nicoli of
Carrara but for some reason, the contract to build the monument was given to
the second-prize winner. –End-
Image by: Luna Miranda
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