The mystery of the mustache, solved
A downtown statue has a new look, and the statue's artist isn't pleased:
David Adickes showed up Thursday at downtown's Lyric Center with Groucho Marx eyeglasses and a fake nose. But though the Houston sculptor's face was clownish, his mood was anything but jovial. High above him, an ebony slash crossed the face of his ivory-toned concrete statue of a cellist, The Virtuoso.
Someone had painted the musician's mustache black.
"My first thought was that somehow a graffiti dude had scaled the body 30 feet and sprayed the mustache," Adickes said. But he soon learned the paint job had been ordered by the office tower's managers.
"They don't have the right to abuse, debase or radically change the concept," Adickes fumed Thursday. "They can't leave it like that. It's hideous. It's Groucho Marx. ... You can't paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa."
[snip]
The cellist's mustache was blackened several weeks ago as workers employed by U.S. Property Management repainted the artwork, which sits on the plaza of the office tower at 440 Louisiana, as part of routine maintenance. Adickes said he learned of the alteration from friends.
Jason Davis, president of U.S. Property Management, said he made the decision to paint the mustache black but offered no further comment. He did not indicate if the mustache will again be painted white.
El Capitan of Baboon Pirates came across this mustache-mystery last week. It doesn't seem right to mess with the sculpture that way, but we'll have to see if the property management company will reverse course.
It is a cool-looking statue, though, with or without the mustache.
KEVIN WHITED ADDS: I hear echoes of Howard Roark in Adickes' complaints, to which I'm completely sympathetic of course.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/11/05 08:26 AM | Print |
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