A monument to Tsar Putin in the works - 25 September, 2002 - News

Notorious sculpture wants to make a statue of the Russian president

A well-known Russian sculpture Zurab Tseritely is thinking of making a monument to Vladimir Putin. Tseritely said that he saw Putin’s photographs in motion, and the president looked amazing in them, “He was just perfect in those photographs. Every artist would wish to reproduce that.”

Tseritely stressed that he had never made a sculpture of a national leader before. He claimed that he disliked them and was afraid of them. One shall assume that the artist likes the current leader and that he is not afraid of Putin at all

Tseritely is motivated to “reproduce the perfection.” He stated that great artists painted king’s portraits, because they were great artists and great images, “Kings liked art and good artists.”

In other words, Tseritely considers Putin a king. If he is a great king, then he is supposed to like Tseritely for being a great artist. This is not happening incidentally. The whole of Russia is getting ready to celebrate Putin's 50th birthday. Therefore, the sculpture will be a kind of a present to the Tsar Putin, a present that the president will definitely like. Putin has already refused to allow Dzerzhinsky’s monument to be returned to Lubyanka Square (Dzerzhinsky was the father of KGB). Tseritely’s idea is not bad, but it is hard to imagine that there are people who want to be Tseritely's inspiration for sculptures, as his sculptures are hideous monstrocities.

Elena Kiseleva PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov