Iraq

As Hussein icon fell, sculptor shrugged

Khalid Ezzat says he felt little as the world watched Iraqis pull down his statue of Saddam Hussein: "I'm an artist, not a politician."

	[Times photo: Jamie Francis] Khalid Ezzat, who created the statue of Saddam Hussein torn down April 9, 2003, won't discuss the political implications.

	[AP photo (2003)] This scene of Khalid Ezzat's statue of the Iraqi dictator being torn down was at least partly orchestrated by American troops.
	[Times photo: Jamie Francis] Students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, where Khalid Ezzat teaches, persist in their studies despite the loss of the top floor to American bombs and a shortage of money for supplies.

BAGHDAD - It is among the most famous sculptures in the world, but it is best known for its destruction, not its artistic merit.

A year ago today, American soldiers and jubilant Iraqis hauled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, ending decades of brutal repression. Among the millions watching on TV was a slightly rumpled 67-year-old man who grows roses in his garden and cares little about politics.

It was Khalid Ezzat, the Iraqi artist who made the statue.

While others watched with joy, anger or disbelief, Ezzat felt scant emotion as months of labor came crashing down in one of the iconic events of modern history.

"It was nothing for me. This statue was made for the people and if the people refuse it, there is nothing I can do. I'm an artist, not a politician."

Of course, art and politics were inevitably entwined during Hussein's era, especially after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when the United Nations slapped harsh economic sanctions on Iraq. For many artists, the only way to get paints and other materials was by doing enormous portraits of Hussein that were plastered on buildings throughout the country.

But Ezzat, a professor at Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts, says he avoided political subjects until 2002, when the Ministry of Information and Baghdad's city government asked him to make a statue of Hussein to stand in the heart of the capital. It was the kind of request no Iraqi could refuse.

Ezzat never met Hussein, but worked from photographs of him in civilian attire. By the time it was finished four months later, the hollow bronze statue weighed nearly a ton and stood 15 feet high.

The statue was trucked to Firdos Square, where Ezzat supervised its placement on a tile pedestal in a traffic circle near the Palestine and Sheraton hotels. Ezzat says he never received payment or heard anything from Hussein, although he assumed the Iraqi leader approved:

"If Saddam isn't satisfied, no one can put something in the main square in Baghdad."

Within months, the two hotels were full of journalists covering the war, and it was from there TV camera crews showed the seemingly spontaneous act of Iraqis pulling down Hussein's statue on April 9, 2003.

As it turned out, the scene was at least partly orchestrated. American troops had blocked off the square, shutting out thousands of Iraqis angered and humiliated by their country's defeat. Instead, the cameras focused on a few hundred cheering men who obligingly yanked on ropes soldiers had tied around Hussein's bronze neck.

For Ezzat, the real sense of loss came later.

A fan of the great English sculptor Henry Moore, Ezzat is considered one Iraq's finest artists because of his own abstract works. Twenty were on display in the Saddam Center of the Arts, among the many public buildings looted and burned in the post-war chaos.

Ezzat feared all 20 sculptures were gone forever. But then someone spotted a piece in a Baghdad market - a 3-foot-high wooden carving of a woman.

In 2001, on one of the few trips Ezzat was able to make during Iraq's years of isolation, the piece was honored at an international competition in China. When Ezzat learned Happy Woman Dancing had survived, he hurried to the market and bought back his own work for 75,000 dinars - about $38.

Today it sits in the living room of his house in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood. If and when the Center of the Arts reopens, he plans to donate it.

Ezzat doesn't directly criticize the Americans. But he clearly thinks more should have been done to stop the looting that destroyed so many of Iraq's cultural treasures and vastly increased the cost and duration of the country's rebuilding.

"They should have taken procedures to protect things," he says, "but nobody did."

Despite his fame, Ezzat, his wife and their 21-year-old son have endured many of the same hardships as other Iraqis since coalition forces entered the country. Last April, they huddled under a staircase as American bombs blasted Iraq's General Security headquarters a few blocks away. The shock waves shattered every window in the house, broke doors and damaged the ceiling.

Today, they have only intermittent power and are reluctant to go out after dark. "Now there's no stability in Iraq," Ezzat says.

Two days a week, he teaches sculpture classes at the Academy of Fine Arts. During the war, Hussein's forces mounted antiaircraft guns on the roof, which was bombed by the Americans. A year later, massive damage remains - the entire top floor, which housed the cinema and photography departments - is little more than a charred shell. On lower floors, students sit in classrooms with broken windows and dangling ceiling tiles.

Since the Americans took over, Ezzat and other faculty members have seen a dramatic increase in salaries - starting teachers who used to make $12 a month now get about $400. But there is no money for repairs, and the academy's 1,000 students have to dig into their own pockets to buy equipment and materials, including clay for sculpting.

Even Ezzat's most talented students will probably earn their living by other means: Iraq remains so poor there is little market for work by famous artists, let alone unknowns. Now that the sanctions have been lifted, Ezzat hopes to resume traveling abroad, to perhaps sell his sculptures through galleries in Europe and the United States. Next summer, several pieces will be on display at a museum in Budapest, Hungary.

A year after it fell, Ezzat dislikes talking about the notorious statue that ensured him at least a footnote in history. Instead, he wants to be remembered for pieces like the small, exquisite bronze of a woman playing a cello.

"This," he says, lifting it tenderly, "is what affects my soul. This was done for me, no one ordered me to do it."

- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

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