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Sculptors Paul DiPasquale and Jillian Holland observe the removal of the J.E.B. Stuart statue on Tuesday.
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The Monument Avenue statues commemorating Confederate leaders are undergoing removal. Artists, whatever their reasons, built them. Now, Richmond artist Paul DiPasquale is advising how best to dismantle them without further damage.
His summer odyssey began with a phone call from a city official, who asked DiPasquale not to reveal the official's name. Authorities needed to figure out best practices for taking down several figurative statues related to the Confederacy.
The artist recalls, “Somebody in City Hall, I don’t know who, said, ‘Let’s call DiPasquale. He made Arthur Ashe. He must know something about this.’ And so I get this call.”
While DiPasquale’s interpretation of Ashe is perhaps his better known and most visible piece locally, he also created the “Headman,” a dynamic depiction on Brown’s Island of an African American canal boatman. That’s the figure commemorated in silhouette on the city’s flag. Then there’s the instant selfie attraction at Virginia Beach, the 34-foot high representation of the mythic lord of the seas, King Neptune. A maquette of Neptune — a scale model that sculptors use to control details for the larger finished work — arises out of the water feature at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. And he created the peripatetic “Connecticut” statue, the 10-foot-high peering American Indian head.
Thus, yes, DiPasquale does know something about this.
A major misconception about large sculptures is that they are always together when put in place. Often, portions of a work are brought to a site and assembled. “They’re welded together,” he says.
The city looked to construction workers for dismantling the Confederate statues. While they have the heavy machinery and necessary know-how for demolition, they’re not artists. One consultant recommended sawing the pieces in half or cutting off the heads in order to effect their removal. DiPasquale studied the situation and determined a better way to bring down the statues without damaging them.
“It’s done with a definite reverence for the art and the artist and their work,” DiPasquale emphasizes. "It's out of respect for the excellence of the engineering as well as the sculpture.” These pieces were made without power tools or modern implements and have withstood what nature threw at them — though on occasion requiring a polish or a repair.
Whatever the figures represent, an actual artist and studio created them, through competition and commission. This is how any artist brings work into the public sphere. The process is almost always fraught by political and artistic considerations that often don’t match up. And, as we’re seeing, the social environment that allows for the installation of monuments and memorials can change, sometimes practically overnight. Then the matter can rise to one of public safety. For DiPasquale, the problematic nature of the pieces is part of a bigger conversation.
“Art has a voice of its own,” he observes, “and it brings people to it,” which is the case more than ever today. Though he feels the statues ought to come down, he also feels strongly that they ought not to be destroyed.
DiPasquale possesses an advantage in understanding the assemblage of the older Monument Avenue works. A decade ago, he toured the Robert E. Lee statue with consultants for preservation, architectural historian Sarah Driggs and outdoor sculpture conservationist Andrew Baxter.
DiPasquale learned about the interior supports of the Lee statue and how pins and extensions to the horse’s hooves anchor the sculpture into the granite base. The base the statues stand on is about a full half inch of solid bronze. So it was with Stonewall Jackson and for J.E.B. Stuart, who is going away today following his recent service as a skateboarder wall.
The process to figuring out the best way to remove statues resembles the one for putting them up. DiPasquale explains, “You scale it up, make an elevation, and you have to understand the tolerance [weight/ratio distribution] you have to give the sculpture. There are no straight lines even [where] there’s supposed to be." DiPasquale turns an epigram: "It’s not how you make it, it’s how you fix it.”
The central problem is that perforating the base plates is a pin, and it’s not obvious what surrounds the pin, whether a column or a tube.
“They had a hole in the granite, and they measured precisely,” DiPasquale says, with admiration for the work. Using block and tackle, the installers slid the sculpture on its platform, matching the attachment holes, then poured hot lead and heated up the pin. How then does one find the pin and what’s around it? A little hole is cut in the base plate to provide a window. That may reveal a reinforcement rib within the interior of the plate or a column in the hole, and the pin is attached to that. Using a drone and magnification, DiPasquale located the site of the pin holding down J.E.B. Stuart.
“[Jillian] Holland, my assistant, is doing the cutting,” DiPasquale says. “She was my head welder for Neptune. She’s the one who got up there to cut the window and made the final cut to release Jackson.”
Jackson’s crane-borne gradual glide from the pedestal came last week with dramatic accompaniments. First, the massive ovation of the many hundreds who’d assembled to witness this event and who remained despite an abrupt summer shower. A clap of thunder and forked lightning caused an even greater volume of spectator cheering. Then came the ringing of the bell from First Baptist Church. The instrument, saved from providing metal for Civil War armaments, now pealed for Richmond’s new era.
For DiPasquale, this incredible conclusion became an entire artistic experience. “I mean, the people there to see, the thunder, lightning, rain and church bells,” he says, pausing, “Artwise, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
But DiPasquale had made practical considerations, too. Rather than resting the figure on its side atop wooden blocks, he brought 15 tires to load on the flatbed to provide a cushion for the piece.
And no, he’s not privy to where these statues are going.
