War Whoop for Freedom

"Stonehenge unhinged with plumbing troubles," griped one local critic. Another called it "the funeral of beauty in art," and an environmental vigilante committee proposed to bring to the dedication a large papier-mache dog that would expel a mass of papier-mache feces at the climax of the ceremony.

The object of all this controversy was the new fountain on San Francisco's Embarcadero Plaza. A monumental structure of squared concrete tubes, cantilevering in all directions above a five-sided pool, it was designed by Canadian Sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, 38, who won the commission in a competition judged by Landscape Architect Lawrence Halprin. To cap it all, on the eve of dedication day last week some vandal stenciled QUEBEC LIBRE in red paint on the fountain.

The graffito was duly erased with white paint before the ceremony. The sun shone, a rock band played, and dignitaries assembled on a platform at the fountain's top--Halprin, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency's Executive Director M. Justin Herman and other officials, including Director Thomas Hoving of Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art. A crowd of several hundred people collected in the plaza below. Suddenly there was a ripple, a movement, a collective rush to the pool. For there, stomping about waist-deep in the water, was the vandal of the night before: black sweater and beard, dark hair hanging below his shoulders and a new can of red paint, with which he was vigorously stenciling another QUEBEC LIBRE on the fountain. He was not arrested. He was, as it turned out, none other than the artist himself, Armand Vaillancourt.

On the platform, Hoving and the civic dignitaries droned out their genial platitudes while Vaillancourt waded to and fro beneath them, imprinting more QUEBEC LIBRES on his fountain. Now and then, he advanced to the mikes and cameras at the pool's rim to explain in loud and broken English his rage at "compromises," which, he claimed, Halprin and the Redevelopment Agency had pressed on him. Defacement? "I am not defacing my sculpture." Did he repudiate it? "No, no. It's a joy to make a free statement. This fountain is dedicated to all freedom. Free Quebec! Free East Pakistan! Free Viet Nam! Free the whole world!"

"If our artist is in the audience," said Herman, with apparently some ironic intent, "will he please raise his hand so that we may applaud him?" From poolside, his feet still dangling in the water, the maestro put his hand to his mouth and uttered a piercing Indian war cry.

Vaillancourt has done numerous other sculptural commissions in Canada, including two for Expo 67. Politics aside, his San Francisco fountain is a most impressive piece of urban statuary, giving a much needed accent to the wide expanse of Embarcadero Plaza. But the furious Vaillancourt refuses to admit that there can be any separation of art from politics. "I am a very emotional man," he explained. "It is all the same thing." Then, prodding his middle finger upward in the direction of the speakers' platform, he added: "And if they do not like it, f-- them."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.