OUR leaders create statues and we reject them. Why? Clearly, masters and masses are not on the same page! They think they know us and what we think, but their reality is not ours. We are as East to West, or more to the point, as educated to uneducated! Our leaders are into high art and heroic statuary. Our people are not; they have not educated us. Try to sell a Picasso and a glossy print downtown for $1 and you will sell only the print.

Enjoying the Picasso requires brain work; the print is a sensory trip. High art, like champagne, is an acquired taste. The masses cannot applaud your statues, and many with degrees don’t like them either. I was in a campus sculpture park and the students kept saying “Nice”, “Pretty”, “Do you get it? Or, “Don’t like it!” Most works were in metal. One person asked, “Why ’im neva dweet in clay eeeh?” The vocabulary of a seven-year-old and the intellectual apparatus of a baby! We are at ease with the literal not the abstract, the retro not the avant garde, and that’s OK if that’s our goal! Bob Marley is not a tree so his statue “can’t have root fi foot”. Bogle’s sword and stance are for those who know the Excalibur myth and the stylised posture of the victor in chivalry. Education is the key! The “donkey penis” on a statue in Emancipation Park is no symbol. Shock tactics?… “Lawd a massy!” Statuary marks the footprint of the Roman empire. The Torah warned about “graven images”. It was issued at the time God was getting a fight from “other gods”. Rome had embedded statuary by the time the Torah arrived via Christians. Pax Romana saved them and they embraced the statuary of the hosts. High Art in Britain was also born of Roman conquest. Edna Manley, the white, British, Jamaican mother of our high art was a true “out of many one” lady and creator of our national statuary. All our black statues were done by white people with psyches weaned in high art; steeped in symbol, metaphor and rendition of the West. British statuary is memory, respect for leaders of wisdom and valour in good and bad times – some rogues too! We may trace British history by statues from the Roman conquest to now; statuary is sensory so the illiterate can view his history too. We are different. As if to change reality, we ripped the statue of the queen who gave us freedom from Victoria Park – a royal mile from Victoria Pier. This national cover-up cannot revise or replace our history. Better the cruel truth, than a lie well told! But what of Africa?

Is there African statuary? In Sub-Sahara we have the cave works of the Olduvai; castings and busts of the Nok, Ife, Yoruba and statuettes all across Africa. Exquisite work, small-scale, for what purpose? The full is not yet known. In North Africa, statuary predated Greece and Rome by millennia. Egyptian high art; royal statuary, architecture, stelae, surface; awesome in tints, scale and grandeur. Rulers with supersize egos; monoliths built by the common man, but not of his psyche. Pyramids, sphinx, statues with heads of animals – emblems of the ruler’s courage, wisdom, stealth; metaphor, symbol eternal in stone. Did common people prefer a literal face, man-sized statues and tombs? Maybe! But this was not their show. Pharoahs ruled, Egypt thrived; impressive even in the 21st century!

Peasant art flourished in the French Revolution. The USSR also created workers’ art –paintings, sculpture, poems: “Boy meets tractor, boy produces; boy meets girl, boy gets help with tractor and they live happily ever after”. High art is rarely literal or simple. Nothing in a normal home looks like anything in our National Gallery. Home has a picture of Jesus – the usual Leonardo portrait of his gay lover – cherry lips, pale complexion, aquiline features, flowing hair hung on a nail or in an Adventist or Mormon book; or a pretty landscape print. High art has quirks and flaws that set it apart. Collectors pay a lot for a coin or stamp with a flaw, the perfect ones are worthless!

The term creativity is much misunderstood. Work as architecture, design, painting, film, photography, are called “creative”, but they are as other jobs, a few people are good and most are average. A creative millionaire British artist under 50 said she chose art as she was lazy, it was easy; it kept her parents “off her case” and classmates could draw and paint better than she could. But she says, “They are still poor!” Creative people in any field are rare! The global meltdown happened as a few gifted financial traders defied the usual wisdom, packaged and sold worthless collateralised debt obligations – truly creative. Creative is as creative does! In any field, the creative are those who are ahead of their peers in innovation and success. It is not simply doing what you were trained in – to sing, write, surgery or carpentry. Capability Brown of Kew Gardens was a most creative gardener – his works are legend. Creativity in UK art today includes works as Chris Ofili’s painting with elephant dung, Tracy Emin’s semen-stained bed installation and Damien Hirst’s cow in formaldehyde. All are worth millions. I prefer a photo of my granddaughter on the wall! Avatar is an epic film, but the creativity of the experts on computers and sets, their 3D images and textures hold the key. Beyoncé is quality “eye candy” but Lady GaGa’s wardrobe and choreography is creatively wicked! Most advertising is pastiche, plagiarism or boring; few creative directors are creative! We can see the daylight between the creative and their peers. Creativity is what separates the best from the rest! Year-on-year Steve Jobs opens the gap on his peers – very creative!

Jamaicans are a blessed people. We are born and live in the West, so if you haven’t read the Bible and Shakespeare you can’t enjoy symbol, metaphor, statuary or my column. We have a problem with nuance. Life is nuanced, rarely black or white, right or wrong; often ambivalent shades of grey. We are not deft at compromise or conciliation – we judge and act from the heart! Our psyche is slapstick; a play must make us weep or laugh; film, high action and art must depict reality, no “surreal crap”. We watch a vampire film and can’t sleep as the real and the fictional converge in our minds – which is which? Jim Carrey plays a gay man in a film so he must be gay for real! And when “kick-butt” Steven Segal sings ballads, we “don’t get it” – why is he not doing kung-fu kicks? A plague on your statues! Give us education! Minister Holness, if you think literacy is enough, think again! We are a wonderful people but we need more! Stay conscious, my friend!

Dr Franklin Johnston is an international project manager with Teape-Johnston Consultants, currently on assignment in the UK.

franklinjohnston@hotmail.com