Happy New Year!
As everyone probably already know, art conservators (Led by a German architect and Italian engineers) have been working their derrieres off trying to restore the giant Buddhas of Bamyani that the Taliban offed in 2001. They've been gathering dust and chunks of debris- 60% stone and plaster and the rest pretty much powder to rebuild the two big buddhas. On the way, they've found that there was probably a third Enlightened one, lying between the two, and have gotten a good gander at the murals on the walls of the niches where they stood. There's been a lot of controversy about the restoration project- to wit- why spend all this dough on statues when the population of Afghanistan is starving to death, why rebuild them in a Muslim country, and why rebuild them at all? After all, even Unesco, which declared the spot a World Heritage site said it would yank the designation if the pieces were reconstructed. The only way they'd continue to support the effort was if the statues were reassembled with a minimum of new material. It's been done before in Greek and Roman structures in a process called anastylosis... The team thinks they can do it, too. Rumors that the Taliban sold 40 tons of debris seem to have been exaggerated.
But what do the people say?
Interestingly enough, they feel the same way New Hampshire's folks do when it comes to restoring the "Old Man of the Mountain"- that giant granite face that had been around for 10,000 years but finally succumbed to gravity with worse results than Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard". It smashed on the AM of May 3, 2003. New England, especially Franconia, went into mourning. After all, this piece was on license plates, in poetry books and even Daniel Webster wrote, "Up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."
The face had been lifted a number of times and at the time of its demise was being held together with cables and spikes. (Nora Ephron, take note.) Some people wanted it replaced with plastic (plastic surgery???) but others said it was too tacky and way too fake. Others suggested rebuilding it with obervation posts in the eyes. Things were getting desperate. By 2005, tourism to Franconia Notch, the former facial home, was down by 50% in spite of the fact that the state had installed coin-op viewers that showed how the face used to look. A new Museum of the Man on the Mountain will be opening there soon. But it just ain't the same.
And here's where the Afganistan connection comes in. Though most people agree a rebuilt artifact just isn't as good as the real thing, even replicas are good for business and god knows that Afghanistan needs a cash infusion about now. They
join their Yankee brothers in economic solidarity.
