Art: Bach Decapitated

The works of Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano, California sculptor, have caused mild civic insurrections and tournaments of mudslinging. Last week’s row was the biggest yet.

Inhabitants of the quietly arty little town of Carmel, Calif, were enjoying their annual festival of music by the great Johann Sebastian Bach. Climax of the festival was to have been the unveiling in Carmel’s city park of Sculptor Bufano’s 14-ft. cylindrical steel and granite statue of Bach. Two nights before the scheduled unveiling, muscular mischief-makers tipped the statue off its wooden perch, stole its 200-lb. blue granite head. Some Carmelites observed that the statue had looked more like Bufano than Bach anyhow. But Mayor Keith Evans was hopping mad. Said he: “It’s an act of vandalism that would go over big in Nazi Germany, but I thought we’d outgrown such things here in Carmel.”