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Book Review – Great White Fathers By:
Randolph Giudice Great White Fathers, John Taliaferro’s
exhaustive, but never exhausting story of Mt. Rushmore and its creator,
Guston Borglum is a testament to the moving power of national monuments
and an honest tribute to the artist whose life was as controversial as the
mountain he carved. Unlike prior biographers of the
Scandinavian-born immigrant, Taliaferro doesn’t provide a simple reading
of the intrepid sculptor who carved “one of the nation’s most
luminescent beacons of democracy”. Here, perhaps for the first time,
Borglum is a three-dimensional personality, full of contradictory
impulses. “Only he (Borglum) could have carved and
completed Mt. Rushmore” Taliaferro writes, “and for better or worse he
is every bit as emblematic of America as the four presidents he
memorialized, in his passion, his persistence, his patriotism, and last
but not least his prejudices.” “I lead a one-man war pretty near all the
time and my battlefield is the world and my enemies are mainly fools,”
wrote Borglum to Helen Keller in 1939. Having tangled mightily with both
the U.S. Mint and the American aircraft industry, no fight was too big for
Borglum. Brilliant sculptures such as his humanistic, “Seated Lincoln”
and his rousing “Wars of America” cemented his reputation as
America’s patriotic heir to the French master, Rodin. But his infamous
flight from Georgia after refusing to complete his memorial to Confederate
General Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain, proved him—as did so many other
occasions—a bad business partner and uncompromising tyrant. Borglum’s
rescue came in the form of a letter from historian Doane Robinson,
inviting the maverick sculptor to carve a “heroic sculpture of unusual
character” in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The sophistication of Borglum’s creation
is fully captured by the author. A colossus, Mt. Rushmore displays
Borglum’s talent for infusing life and reality into any sculpture,
regardless of scale. Taliaferro delivers the monument to us in bold and
exquisite detail: The “slight curve” of (Jefferson’s) lips…as
subtle as the dimple Michelangelo gave to David’s knee.” Appropriation, or theft—as South Dakota’s Sioux Indians have named it—is the
calling card of the major historical players in Great White Fathers, from
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s invasion of Sioux
territory, to Borglum’s desecration of the Paha
Sapa (Black Hills) during the carving of Mt. Rushmore. Taliaferro
makes it abundantly clear that monuments, built in praise of freedom, have
come to symbolize exclusion for those who don’t agree with our vision of
democracy. Today, the heritage of Native Americans is a
silent affair amidst the traffic swarming around Borglum’s stateside
attraction. For some, their wish for Rushmore and other memo-rials is the
fate of Ozymandias: “I’m positive,” said lawyer and Native American
activist, Mary Black Elk “that forces of nature will take care of the
desecrations…the earth will cleanse itself.” This doesn’t stop Elk
from shaking down Taliaferro for money when he asks her for an interview.
Charging him $325.00 under the guise of “cultural counseling” one
can’t help but feel that history—in forcing them to compete with this
trespassing giant—has transformed the Sioux into outright capitalists.
Still, cosmic payback has to start somewhere. In Great White Fathers, Taliaferro paints a
fascinating portrait of an American original, and regardless of what label
you hang on his colossus—beacon of democracy, or commercial
spectacle—you emerge at the other end of this story, wanting to see it
in the flesh. Great White Fathers By
John Taliaferro. |
