Art: San .Francisco’s Saint

If the little Spanish town of Yerba Buena in California had not changed its name to San Francisco (St. Francis) in 1847, it might forever have lacked a colossus. It might also have been spared a long and bitter argument about that project which has involved its creator, Beniamino Benvenuto Bufano, with the City Fathers, the Franciscan Order, the Archbishop of San Francisco, the Federal Art Project and, last and most lathered of all, Columnist Westbrook Pegler. Mr. Pegler discovered San Francisco’s proposed colossus early this month and slapped it square on the button.

Beniamino Bufano is a small, swart, untamable sculptor of 40, whose adventures have included sojourns with China’s sainted Sun Yatsen, India’s Mahatma Gandhi. For about ten years he has been possessed by the ambition to give San Francisco a colossal statue of its “patron” St. Francis of Assisi, envisioned finally as a 150-ft. figure of glittering stainless steel. His first model for this won the approval of the local WPA, of Archbishop John Joseph Mitty, and, in the end, of the San Francisco art commission. Leading U. S. Franciscans, however, called it a “Mephistophelean monstrosity.”

What aroused Columnist Pegler was a rough sketch used for publicity by the San Francisco citizens’ committee, which is now out raising $15,000 for materials. “It is,” said Old Peg, “a figure with . . . a pointed beard, inclosed in an aviator’s helmet and having, beneath the chin, a sort of bib or drool cloth. The hands are upraised in the standard posture of the guest of honor at a stickup and the figure then declines, round, rigid as a concrete pipe and innocent of fold or human line, to the waist, where it disappears into a bar rel. … I, personally, will undertake tc set to work . . . and make a better statue of St. Francis. . . .”

At this, Sculptor Bufano’s artistic friends were not slow to remark that a “drool cloth” was something Mr. Pegler needed himself. Sculptor Bufano promptly challenged Pegler to make good on his offer to sculp something better. The horseplay stage of the controversy then began. Old Newshawk Pegler played ball with the boys by posing for photographs in an artist’s smock and beret. Sculptor Bufano made a scornful sketch of Sculptor Pegler’s statue. Finally completed last week and cast in plaster, Pegler’s model was shipped to San Francisco. It was called “Mrs. George Spelvin” and included a cornucopia, a gear wheel and an unexplainable mouse.

Meanwhile, Benny Bufano was finishing a two-year job of revising and refining his model of St. Francis. Last week he disclosed it to TIME photographers. Unlike the original model, it showed the saint beardless and smiling, and the bird bath which once was planned for the top of St. Francis’ head had been removed. San Franciscans who consider Sculptor Bufano’s stainless steel and granite figure of Sun Yat-sen the finest statue in the city (TIME, Nov. 22, 1937) were wondering last week what this symmetrical mass will look like when 156 ft. high (five feet higher than the Statue of Liberty) and mounted on a 35-ft. base. Said Sculptor Bufano:

“I’m still getting a kick out of all this. Pegler has made a prize ass of himself. . . .”