06 April 2017
Bustgate
Such things as dreams are made of.
By Chin Chin
Cristiano Ronaldo clearly has very good manners. He has declared himself honoured by the new bust of him at Madeira airport, even though it does not really look like him at all. Critics have suggested that there is more of a resemblance to Darren Gough or possibly to one of the talking heads. Actually a quick glance at the photograph and you realise that the critics are wrong. The model was clearly Geoffrey Boycott, once the Yorkshire and England opening batsman, and that gives rise to a mystery. Why should the sculptor have chosen Boycott for his model rather than Ronaldo himself? Was it just a mixup, like the Oscars presentation? Did the sculptor ask for a photograph of Ronaldo and receive one of Boycott instead? Did someone set him up by sending him a photograph of Boycott as a joke?
It is certainly an odd substitution. Beyond the fact that they both reached the top of the tree in sporting terms, Ronaldo and Boycott appear to have little in common. Ronaldo, captain of the Portuguese national football team, is one of the most prolific goalscorers of all time, bursting with the mercurial flair and opportunism of a great forward. Boycott is, well, slightly different. Dour, meticulous and careful, he was steady as a rock when playing for England. But mercurial? No, of course not. He was a Yorkshireman. It is odd then that people should look at the statue “of Ronaldo” and see a man of such a very different character.
There is of course nothing new in people being reproduced as other than they are. For example, a friend of mine has a statue of Pitt the Younger wearing a toga. Now Pitt was a fine classicist and a great politician to boot, but it is unlikely that he ever wore a toga in real life unless he happened to be going to a fancy dress party. The Prince Regent possibly, or even at a pinch his supporter Charles James Fox, but Pitt, no, not his sort of thing at all. It is odd, then, that he should have been represented like that, and what is more it could easily become a source of confusion. Suppose that one of the statues of him is lost and dug up in a battered and unlabelled state by a future generation of archaeologists. They will spend hours debating whether they have gazed upon the true face of Julius Caesar or whether this is merely a statue of some relatively unimportant patrician.
When the subject of a painting is fictional, the artist has little choice but to use a model. Paintings of Shakespearean characters, therefore, are typically pictures of actors who were familiar in that particular role. Of course they are dressed for the part, as they would be on stage, but nonetheless a portrait of “Olivier playing Hamlet” is a picture of Laurence Olivier and not a picture of a Danish prince.
Again when the subject is dead, either the artist has to work from a previous representation or, where these are inadequate, a model has to be used. After all, there are many portraits of Christ, but none of the painters actually knew what he looked like. If you go to the City Art Museum of St Louis, Missouri, and look at the Philippe de Champagne portrait of the French King of that name, the features that you will see are not those of the great crusading king at all but rather those of Vincent de Voiture, a poet protégé of Cardinal Richelieu and the son of a wine merchant. There is no reason to think that he looked in the slightest like St Louis but the art of photography had not really caught on in the 13th century, so we shall never know.
It is less obvious why you would use a model of a living subject but I suppose that it is merely a demonstration of human vanity. Much-photographed models are said to have their best side and to take care that that is the side which is turned to the camera. It is easy to sneer at that but in truth those of us who know that we are about to be photographed will sit up and put on a suitable expression in preparation. In fact we will go a little further than that. If photography is on the agenda, perhaps the hair gets an extra brush and the spectacles are replaced by contact lenses; perhaps too the orange shirt which came free with the dog food is replaced with the one which mother said suits us. Generally we all like to look our best for posterity
It is only a small step further to bring in props. You have bandy legs? Better then to be pictured on horseback. Rather a weak chin? Would a suit of armour toughen up the image? Need to give an impression of distinguished gravity? Perhaps the robes of a senator will fit the bill.
Once you have gone this far, the portrait is hardly of you at all. It is of your face in another’s body, rather like those cutouts you look through at a fairground. It is only a small step further to start changing the face itself, to begin with some airbrushing but ultimately to use a model. Now there is nothing physical left at all. It is thus that we pass down to our descendants an image not of ourselves but of our dreams. That is natural enough and entirely comprehensible in human terms. What I can’t get my mind round is why Cristiano Ronaldo’s dream should be of batting like Geoffrey Boycott.
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