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• Sculptor: Sally James Farnham. Pedestal: Clarke and Rapuano.
• Dedicated: 1921; relocated and rededicated 1951.
• Medium and size: Bronze (13.5 feet), granite pedestal (20.3 feet).
• Location: Central Park South at Avenue of the Americas

About the sculpture

The Bolivar monument, at thirty-four feet tall, is one of the City’s towering sculptures in size – but not in esthetic quality, even though it’s the third attempt at a sculpture for New York of the Liberator of South America.

In 1884 the government of Venezuela presented New York with a statue of Bolivar. “An aesthetic calamity,” sneered the New York Times of Leon de la Cuva’s statue, “more aggressively bad than any [Central Park] now contains.”

Although it was given an out-of-the-way site near Central Park West and Eighty-Second Street, within a few years the statue had been so often ridiculed that the Venezuelan government volunteered to pay for a new one. In the 1890s Cuva’s Bolivar was removed from his pedestal, probably to be melted down for use in the new statue. (On the sculpture of greyhounds that occupied Bolivar‘s pedestal for one night only, in 1916, see this post.)

Members of the National Sculpture Society “found no fault with the modeling” of the clay model for a new Bolivar, but asserted that the design “failed to suit the artistic taste of New York” (New York Times 8/27/1897). This is an early instance of the trend toward city control of sculptures erected in public places, based on the idea that sculpture should edify and educate the public rather than simply commemorate a certain person or event: see this post on the City Beautiful movement. After World War I, a new Bolivar was finally dedicated at Eighty-Second Street.

At first glance, Bolivar looks similar to the equestrian Washington at Union Square. Both men have severely upright, military postures. Both wear military uniforms and have hats in hand. The poses of the horses are almost identical. What’s significantly different? Bolivar holds the reins with one hand and his hat in the other, rather than reaching out to a crowd as Washington does.

Compared to his companions at Central Park South, Martí (Outdoor Monuments 33) and San Martin, who both ride rearing horses, Bolivar looks even more static and withdrawn. If you look at these three in silhouette (which isn’t difficult, given how seldom the sunlight reaches them), even the outlines of the Martí and San Martín convey great movement, energy, and excitement. Bolivar, in contrast, seems alone, on display. Despite competent workmanship and rigorously researched details, Farnham’s Bolivar lacks impact because it doesn’t show us the passions that drove the Liberator or make a connection with the onlookers.

In the 1940s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (Outdoor Monuments 9) proposed renaming Sixth Avenue the “Avenue of the Americas,” to promote and celebrate Pan-American union. He suggested that statues of prominent South Americans be erected along the Avenue. Bolivar was moved to its current location in 1951, with the help of several hundred thousand dollars from the Venezuelan government for a new pedestal and landscaping. It was, alas, yet another bad investment. The pedestal doesn’t merely elevate Bolivar above the common crowd, it makes him nearly disappear, and the surrounding trees complete the task of making him invisible to passersby.

About the subject

“Those of us who have toiled for liberty in South America have but ploughed the sea,” wrote Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) despairingly, near the end of his life. Strange words for a man known as the Liberator of Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia! Although he’s often called “South America’s George Washington,” the outlines of their lives were quite different. Washington died at age 67, at his home with family and friends, after eight years as commander-in-chief of the United States army and another eight years as president. Bolivar, by contrast, swore at the tender age of seventeen, “I will not rest, not in body or soul, till I have broken the chains of Spain.” As a young man he visited the United States and, like Lafayette, dreamed of establishing freedom and an American-style government in his homeland. But Bolivar fought for the liberation of South America for eighteen years, then died at age 47, alone and impoverished, on a tiny island off the coast of Venezuela.

What went wrong? It wasn’t lack of education or lack of military ability on Bolivar’s part. Born to a wealthy family in Caracas, he had a tutor who tried to instill in him the principles of Rousseau, and introduced him to such intellectuals as the scientist, diplomat and linguist Alexander von Humboldt. (See Forgotten Delights: The Producers, 5.) Bolivar’s familiarity with John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers is obvious in the constitutions he wrote, notably the Bolivian one of 1826.

But the situation in South America was very different from that of the thirteen American colonies. The territory Bolivar desired to liberate from Spanish dominion was vast and sparsely populated. Rain forests, deserts and 20,000-foot peaks made transportation and communication exceedingly slow and difficult. Bogota, the capital of Bolivar’s confederation of states, was three or four weeks of hard riding from the cities of Venezuela.

Such terrain made communication and the spread of new ideas difficult. Bolivar believed that his fellow citizens had been stunted by years of colonial rule.

Bound to the triple yoke of ignorance, external tyranny and corruption, we have been able to acquire neither knowledge, power nor virtue.

— Angostura Address, 1819

As time went on, Bolivar became bitter about his compatriots’ inability to share his vision for South America.

The abuses, neglects, lack of organicity, are the result of causes it has not been in my power to correct, for many reasons: first, because a man in brief time and with scant general knowledge cannot do everything: not well, not even badly; second, because I have had to devote myself to expelling the enemy; third, because in our frightening chaos of patriots, traitors, egoists, white, colored, Venezuelans, Granadans, federalists, centralists, republicans, aristocrats, good and bad, and the whole caboodle of hierarchies in which every band is split, there are so many conditions to be observed that, dear friend, I have been forced many a time to be unjust in order to be politic—and when I’ve been just I’ve paid for it!

— Letter to Antonio Nariño, April 1821

In 1824 Bolivar’s forces decisively defeated the Spanish army at Ayacucho, the last battle in Latin America’s wars for independence. Four years later the countries he liberated had seceded from his union of Latin American states. By 1830, the year he died, most were under the rule of a chaotic succession of military leaders.

More

• Central Park South also has sculptures of Jose de San Martin_ and Jose Marti.
• This essay is based on the chapter on Bolivar in Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide.
• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon in print and Kindle formats. More here.
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