Controversy in France for a statue of Victor Hugo depicting the writer with a black face

The restoration of a statue of French writer Victor Hugo in his hometown sparked controversy after the the figure of the author underwent a noticeable change and remained with a black face, a sort of “reversal” that has generated episodes of vandalism and protests by various sectors of the French right.

It was the city council of the French city of Besançon that decided to carry out the repair work on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the placement of the monument, which is located on the Besançon Human Rights Esplanade. Its repair was entrusted to the same foundation that had placed it in 2002.

Although the color change was initially thought to be due to an attempt to respect the original version of the work by Senegalese artist Ousmane Sow, who died in 2016, his widow, Béatrice Soulé, said the husband’s intention he would never have played a Victor Hugo as a black man.

“There’s a kind of white collar that was much thinner in the original work, and his face was flesh-colored. It seems that Victor Hugo is black and this was never Ousmane’s intention”, explained Soulé in dialogue with the newspaper The Republican East.

The city council, for its part, defended the restoration work. “The idea was to return the spirit of his creation, as the artist wanted, with more colors. I believe that we got pretty close to the colors of the 2003 statue”, Aline Chassagne, deputy head of the Directorate of Culture of Besançon, a city in eastern France, told the local press.

The fact generated consternation and caused social media to be flooded with criticism. Several far-right figures have criticized the mayor’s office, which is governed by the Green Party. Congressman Gilbert Collard, of Eric Zemmour’s Reconquista party, denounced the incident as “crazy woke up the greens”.

Even the former mayor of Besançon Jean-Louis Fousseret, present with Sow at the inauguration of the statue in October 2003, was surprised by the new look of the work, which he considers not very faithful to its original state.

“Ousmane Sow, which was one of the great encounters of my life, wanted this Victor Hugo, as it was when it was inaugurated. And the color was very different from what you see now“He told the French press.

The situation has also generated acts of vandalism, and the council has already denounced that there were people who he threw white paint on the statueespecially to the face.

“The statue of Victor Hugo by Ousmane Sow, which was under renovation, has been vandalized. The city council of #Besançon has filed a complaint against this intolerable act,” the official account of the mayor’s office reports on Twitter.

Known for his sculptures of human figures, Ousmane Sow began his works by working with an iron structure which he covered with sacks and then modeled the silhouettes with a mixture of earth, straw and sand.

“I like a work of art to be open, accepting different interpretations from the public, aggressive for some, peaceful for others,” he told the newspaper. i get them in 2013, in an interview released on the occasion of his admission to the Academy of Fine Arts, a historical fact since he was the first African artist to make it.

Source: RFI