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Secrets
The hidden hand
By Zinovy Zinik
38
FORMER
MASCOT
n It’s been some time since I last saw Picasso’s
doodle of a dove holding a postdiluvian twig in its
beak. During the Cold War years, it had been used
as a mascot for every rally or international conference
dedicated to the struggle for world peace
and initiated, as a rule, with full Soviet backing.
With the Cold War over, this emblem of the epoch
mysteriously disappeared from public display as
quickly as portraits of the Politburo or the Berlin
Wall. Its post-flood symbolism might have been
useful in the struggle against global warming, a
condition which started immediately
after the Cold War had
ended. There is nothing extraordinary,
though, about this or that
public symbol losing its popularity;
what is remarkable is the tendency
to get rid of the dead objects
or live creatures behind such symbols
the moment they lose their popularity.
Take, for example, Picasso’s emblem
and actual doves or pigeons. In popular imagination,
these birds are not only symbols of peace
and bearers of goodwill, but also, paradoxically,
disseminators of pestilence and plague. With a
relentless determination bordering on rage, London's
mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone (nicknamed
"Red Ken" for his Trotskyite past and his
sympathies for Russia), declared street pigeons a
danger to public health and started a campaign
to rid Trafalgar Square of its legendary denizens.
Feeding pigeons on the square has been, for the
last two centuries, on the must-do list for any tourist
visiting London. Red Ken insisted that eliminating
the cost of daily cleaning the square of pigeon
shit would save tons of money, money that could
then be spent on helping needy humans. It would
also help restore to its former glory the statue of
Admiral Horatio Nelson, standing on a column in
the center of the square. With his head serving as
a perch for the birds, the admiral's features were
often hardly visible under the layers of pigeon shit.
After months of arguments, the pigeons were finally
removed from Trafalgar Square.
Having expelled the pigeons, Red Ken invited
his beloved Russian oligarchs and expats to transform
– with all kinds of expensive props – the place
commemorating the Battle of Trafalgar into a simulacrum
of Red Square. The purpose was to celebrate
Russian New Year’s Eve in the newly-cleaned
square. Russian food stalls, souvenir tents and
vodka kiosks were put up on the perimeter of the
square, and in its center the Red Army choir and
orchestra bellowed Russian songs into London's
winter air. Admiral Nelson observed all this from
his tall pedestal, but his newly-cleaned face was
hidden from view by a gigantic balloon advertising
the services of Aeroflot. Rendered headless, he
might have been mistaken by uninformed Russian
tourists for Alexander Pushkin, because the lower
portion of the Nelson statue resembled that of
a statue of Pushkin. The feature common to both
monuments is a hand inside the overcoat, behind
the waistcoat lapel.
Everyone who has ever taken part in amateur
dramatics knows that the main hindrance to stage
stardom is one’s hands. One simply doesn’t know
what to do with them – unless they happen to be
occupied with a cup of tea or a walking stick. We
intertwine our fingers behind the back of our neck,
fold our hands on our breast or play idly with
prayer beads.
Sculptors are confronted with the same problem.
They are lucky if their subjects can be put on
a bronze horse while holding a halter or a sword,
or horseless and grasping a handbag like Mrs.
Thatcher. They might sculpt their subjects making
a victory sign like Churchill, or stretching their
FALL 2016