Monuments for Free

Epson sells cheap ink jet printers but ink for them is very expensive. Gillette sells cheap shaving sets but overpriced shaving cartridges. This marketing trick is probably as old as the world but a well-known Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli goes further. He gives his monumental sculptures as gifts. It should be noted that they are not small monuments – they are almost always huge. Really huge. For example, his monument to Peter the Great in Moscow is almost 100 feet tall. It was erected in record times. One day Muscovites were walking along an empty Moscow River embankment but two weeks later there’s a monster bronze structure – a tall sailing ship mast with a man at a steering wheel holding some kind of a scroll in his right hand. The head of the man definitely belonged to Peter the Great but the structure in general looked like Tsereteli’s monument to Columbus. People who closely follow the creative work of the sculptor were sure that he already tried in vain to give this monument as a gift to the Domenic Republic to commemorate the Discovery of America. But then the head of the man belonged to Columbus. The Domenican government managed not to take this gift. What an unfriendly gesture!

This year Zurab Tsereteli managed to give as a gift his another huge monument commemorating 911 that will be erected in New Jersey.

"NJ.Com reports Bayonne has accepted Zurab Tsereteli’s teardrop memorial that was rejected by Jersey City. Soviet artist Zurab Tsereteli to put the 100-foot tall monument on the city’s waterfront, at the former Military Ocean Terminal, now known as the Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor. The roughly nine-story monument - a rectangular block with a fissure down the middle with a 40-foot glass teardrop suspended in it - is called “To the Struggle Against World Terrorism.”

Is Mr. Tsereteli so rich and generous that he can afford to give away his monuments for free? Well, you see, it’s only the monument itself that is a gift. You only pay for bronze, steel, casting, transportation and construction. Evil tongues say that the artist has his own interest in companies that cast and construct his monuments. In case you don’t want to pay anything at all there’s the Government of Moscow that can sign the bill. Zurab Tsereteli is one of the closest friends of the Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov.

"Although the memorial is being donated by Moscow and the people of Russia, Perrucci said the Bayonne memorial committee will continue to raise funds to cover costs associated with such items as the park’s landscaping and brick pavers, which he said could be used as personalized memorials, reports NJ.Com.