The Malta Independent on Sunday
The plight of the SETTE GIUGNO MONUMENT
All artistic idioms are loaded with class politics, as are languages and dialects. In the late 1930s the American art critic Clement Greenberg, whose influential writings have endured much antagonism in the past few decades, established a political division between figuration and abstraction according to a binary scale of subordination versus freedom. Greenberg understood abstraction to be emblematic of the liberal, democratic West, whilst figurative art, specifically realism, was framed as kitsch, inferior, and, most importantly, the artistic language of the totalitarian Soviet Union. It has been revealed that the New York School abstract expressionists received funding from the CIA to promote the US as a symbol of cultural freedom (despite the artists being Trotskyists) and to counteract the global diffusion of socialist realism.
Greenberg’s arguments created a dangerous hierarchy which engendered further divide between cultures, and this has been contentiously debated for several years within academic circles. What has been rather unfortunately overlooked is Malta’s direct participation in this polemical wrestling match between figurative and abstract art
The sculptor Anton Agius made a deliberate choice to adopt figuration after successful years of developing a career as an abstract artist. This drastic turn was, as Dr Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci writes, a ‘fatal compromise’ which halted a very promising and interesting trajectory of creative growth. Agius himself declared that abstraction failed to satisfy his urge to express the political and social experiences of post-independence Malta.
Agius’ very enthusiastic will to be ‘the artist reflecting the spiritual development of his nation’ led him down a very bumpy road, filled with qualitative inconsistencies and paradoxes, argues Dr. Schembri Bonaci in his critical publication ‘Anton Agius and Gothic Socialist Realism’ (Horizons, 2011). His objective was to develop a local brand of socialist realism which could give a voice to the Maltese masses.
This local interpretation of socialist realism has been eruditely re-categorised by Dr. Schembri Bonaci as ‘gothic socialist realism’. In his own words: “Agius’ Gothic forms, together with his social allegiances, and his participation in Malta’s social developments, fused styles and philosophies, creating a strange hybrid of medievalism and Social/Socialist Realism.” The Warburgian visual mosaic on the front cover of the publication which juxtaposed images of Agius’ and of Gothic sculptures attests to the uncanny similarities; figurative imperfection, the grotesque, yet also the imaginative and the fascinating. Looking at details of Agius’ sculptures incite a re-thinking of his work.
In the past weeks the government has held a period of public consultation for people to give their opinion in order to find a new home for Agius’ Sette
Giugno monument. A provocative albeit quite unnecessary gesture.
It seems that the advice of the general public and of party politicians has been given more importance than that of experts in aesthetics, art history, and urban planning.
The statement of the Nationalist Party to move the monument to near the new parliament building is obscene, and at the same time rather humorous when con- sidering that the PN itself subscribed to the Greenbergian idea that abstraction projects an image of freedom and democracy. In
Fehmiet Bażiċi, the publication of the party’s vision for the 1987 election, the abstract paintings of Alfred Chircop were intelligently chosen for the front cover and for the haphazardly-placed (another clever decision to appear liberal) illustrations. This decision was evidently made to overthrow years of Agius’ local adaptation of socialist realism which characterised the Mintoff administration.
In 2016, the party has “suggested placing the monument close to the country’s highest institution out of respect for the monument’s symbolism and history.” (Times of Malta, July 15, 2016). I cannot infer whether this is a bizarre peace-offering, a subtle surrender, or an unwitting proclamation of ignorance.
Prof. Conrad Thake has very simply said that the monument should remain in its current position at Hastings garden. I too am of the opinion that the monument should remain undisturbed, embellished by trees, which, in their serene state provide an adequate counter-balance to Agius’ agitated martyrs.
Prof. Mark-Anthony has also criticised the PN proposal: “Certainly it has no business to be seen anywhere near the new Parliament space. For two reasons. First, that space is beautiful on account of the geometry of its forms; the ‘empty’ bits are an essential part of that geometry. To put anything there would be the equivalent of the gastri (jardinieres) that clutter the average nanna’s hallway.”
The second reason which he gives is that “Agius’ monument is socialist realism writ straightfaced, without the slightest hint of humour or irony.” Unlike Prof. Falzon, I believe that Agius’ appropriation of socialist realism is noteworthy and shouldn’t perceived negatively.
What is really troubling is when a monument is completely devoid of ideology. In quotidian terms, this is akin to drinking a bottle of coca-cola which has gone flat after being left open in the blazing sun. The new monuments and public sculptures in Valletta are painfully silent. Muteness sometimes resonates at unbearable pitches, and with the way things are going for Valletta’s open spaces, the city will soon be uninhabitable, even for its loyal pigeon population.
The arguments against the political decisions on monumental art in Malta have been exhaustingly reiterated. Insistence on the urgent need to improve the situation has become a cumbersome and, frankly, useless task.
Agius’ Sette Giugno monument is far from harmonious, but weaved within its distorted and aggressive renditions of the tortured human form is a message, an idea, a moment of unforgettable suffering. It does compel one to stop to look at it, to question its purpose. This is the function of monuments; to make us react, to remember, and to know.
The recent monuments far from fulfil the above criteria. As Prof. Falzon elucidates, certain trends have been overly-boisterous and flamboyantly vacant: “There is already too much solemn bronze-work that glorifies the exceedingly great greatness of the nation in Valletta (the new La Valette monument is a recent case in point). If we must give in to horror vacui, we could at least do so in a light-hearted way that recognises that urban space is not just about nationalist triumphalism.”
I firmly agree with Schembri Bonaci that Agius’ many contradictions and inconsistencies reflect the troubles of a nation in search of its identity. Contradiction is actually a defining characteristic of Maltese twentieth-century art, especially resounding in the works of Emvin Cremona, Esprit Barthet, and Frank Portelli, together with others.
The major difference between Agius and the other mentioned artists is that Agius turned his back on the West in search of a language which he felt had greater significance to his present-day political context. In Malta, and in numerous other countries, we welcome art bearing links to Western idioms with open arms, and dismiss nonwestern tendencies as ‘harmful foreign bodies’ (which makes the case of the Ottoman Cemetery very interesting). We forget that the modernists whom Maltese modern artists revered were undisguised sympathisers of Eastern politics. Schembri Bonaci notes that many Western modernists, such as Picasso, were influenced by socialist realism.
Greenberg’s hierarchy continues to guide our judgement. However, our present position allows us to look at history ob- jectively and to reject the colonial postulate that ‘some histories are more important than others’.
I am not here trying to make arguments in favour or against particular traditions, but to propose that democratic methodologies are adopted for the interpretation of history. Malta still needs to shrug off the colonial mentality of superiority which has caused us to relegate our own modern art as backwards, provincial, and irrelevant. Certain recent political decisions on art are actually sustaining the idea of local inferiority rather than fighting against it. Agius was a fighter.