Pygmy artwork that became giant

Balvinder

THE Statue of Unity, one of the most expensive dream projects of PM Modi, was unveiled with great fanfare. Built at  a cost of Rs 3,000 crore, and with a height of 182 m (597 ft), it is being presented as the world’s tallest monument. 

 Designed by a 93-year-old well-known sculptor, Ram V Sutar, the statue is located on the Sadhu Bet river island, facing the Narmada Dam near Rajpipla in Gujarat. The monument area is spread over 20,000 sq m and is surrounded by a 12 sq-km artificial lake.

The exuberant cost of this zero-utility project has already started a debate among both politicians and the public. While the political debate focuses more on settling scores, the common man’s concern is chiefly on the wasteful expenditure. 

 One wishes Modi had read the famous poem Ozymandias by PB Shelley that speaks about the meaninglessness of such statues. However, being an artist, though of mediocre merit and small stature, I could not digest the visual demerits of this statue. That is why I wonder why no one is debating on this important aspect. 

 It was unexpected of Ram V Sutar, he being a master and experienced sculptor. Pictures showing the gigantic image from its profile exhibit a perceptible loss of visual weight of the statue’s lower part in particular. It should have been visually weighty enough at its base to give it a monumental feel. 

But the statue appears to be very weak, to the extent that it gives a jarring impression, as if the figure is ready to collapse any time! In fact, the solid steel of the Iron Man’s great persona is also missing from his stoic expression.

The aesthetic merit of artworks is never assessed by their comparative physical size or weight. For instance, world-renowned wall paintings of Ajanta are not valued for their huge size, but for their perfectly measured melodic renditions. Similarly, our exquisite miniature paintings command, despite their mini size, a high pedestal in the annals of world art history.

Comparatively speaking, though the Statue of Unity is double the size of the Statue of Liberty, it does not match the monumentality of the iconic US statue. 

Thus the much talked about giant Statue of Unity will perhaps be remembered, in our otherwise glorious past history of art, as an unartistic pygmy due to its ill proportioned bodily divisions.