Molina: Sittin� on Top of the World
Enormous black curls and a glaring Hawaiian shirt open down to
the breast, where more curly hair peeped out. Nestled there was a
gold metal that kept flashing while he paced and made those funny
remarks. He might have just stepped out of a caf� on Sierpes
Street in Seville leaving them all a-giggle. A cigar; the start of a
pouch. No wrinkles in his slacks, and soft-leather shoes that
looked like slippers.
I had just seen him talking to Angel. He had left him with a clap on
the shoulder and a parting joke, which made Angel look up from his
stone, holding the air-hammer like a barber his electric razor, and
spread his eyes wide. That was his way of laughing.
The man came my way, chewing on his cigar. I put down my
hammer and wiped my hands on my pants. This was the moment I
had pictured all week-end. "Are you Se�or Montserrat?" I asked.
"Jeeeeee!" he said and swatted the air, as if he�d been attacked
by a wasp.
"Sorry. I thought..."
"Is that guy coming here today?" He looked around the workshop
with stagy anxiety and added: "My name is Hip�lito Molina. How
do you do. Where�d you get that disgusting accent?"
"I�m American," I said. Something about him made you smile.
"Don�t you tell anybody."
And then, just to make sure that I understood he was teasing, he
punched my shoulder and laughed. Then put his arm around me.
"What�s a nice kid like you doing in a dust farm like this?"
"Are you a sculptor?"
"Yeah. That stone Angel is doing is mine. I ought to have a card"
- he zipped open a leather purse as large as a wash-up kit and
found a card to give me.
HIP�LITO MOLINA, goldsmith and sculptor. Sevilla. Espa�a.
On the back was a photo of a cluster of red and green crystals out
of which rose a spiralling silver horn. He watched me study the
picture. "How�s that for pretty?"
"Very nice," I lied. If that was sculpture then I was in the wrong
racket. What had become of movement, of shape, of meaning? It
wasn�t sculpture, it was geology. It was pretty like jewels and
stones are pretty; but where was the maker? Anyone could collect
and glue together pretty stones and pretty metals.
"Is that a unicorn horn?"
"Hey, yes!" he said, delighted. "Aren�t you a surprising little
Yankee. I usually have to tell everybody what to think. I thought
this one was obvious enough, but not one in fifty knows what the
hell I�m doing."
I held back for a moment. Should I or shouldn�t I? Then I
decided to go ahead and risk sounding like a scholar, a pedant.
"Cellini made a reliquary for a unicorn horn once and this reminded
me of that."
"Who the hell is Cellini?" he said defiantly, fierce eyes. He was
suddenly still; his clock seemed to stop. It served me right! He
obviously thought that the competition had been stealing from him
(an easy, lucrative and obvious thing to do) or maybe that I was
accusing him of stealing from the competition.
"No," I said apologetically. "He was a Renaissance goldsmith who
wrote a book..."
"Renaissance, eh?" His clock started up again. He relaxed.
"Well, I don�t know the guy but I�m sure he never did anything this
nice. This is pure poetry."
"Those were different times," I said. "Yours is much more
original." Forked tongue.
"Look," he said and pulled the card out of my hand to show me
something. "See. There. Unicorn 2. The print�s no good - you
almost can�t see it. But that�s the title."
He gave me back the card and asked what I was making. "Un
torito," he said himself, looking, but not too closely, at my plaster
model. No comment. I felt ashamed of its realism, its classical
look. I supposed it gave me away as a hypocrite for my praise of
his rock cluster. It was either this bull or that rock cluster, wasn�t
it?
But finally Hip�lito said: "I made a bull almost like this one a long
time ago. You keep at it. Go on working and keep your eyes
open." He clearly meant: keep your eyes open for the market or
for what other artists are doing. The implication was that my
treatment of the bull had been superseded by artistic evolution. I
knew I was hanging on to the past. But let them all show me
something better than the David, please!
"What is Angel�s stone going to be?" I asked. It was an
unintelligible red knot. In some places it reminded you of a coiled
snake.
"Now what do you think, cowboy? Come on, tell me."
"A snake? A knot?"
"You�re a damned genius!" He took off my beret and swatted me
with it. "The serpent�s head is going to be gold. The base will be
emeralds, for grass. Can you begin to see it? Give me a call
sometime and drop over to my studio. You�ll be surprised. You
might even see something you like." A wink and a chuckle.
"There�s more in this world than that stuff," he said, throwing his
eyes in the direction of Montserrat�s plaster figures.
"That red angel is awfully nice," I said. I owed that much to
myself.
"What red angel?"
I pointed to the rock ledge where it sat.
"Tchah!" he said. "I mean, why doesn�t he just go out and buy
some porcelain figurine at a furniture shop. He�d save himself a lot
of work. Well, not too much work either. I hear he does one of
those damned things in a morning."
At lunchtime, while we sat on the big marble blocks and wolfed our
bocadillos, Luis liked to spin yarns and gossip like an old sailor. He
told me about Molina: "Right now he�s sitting on top of the world.
Viento en popa - the wind at his back. Go downtown and look in
the windows of all the expensive jewellers and art galleries and
you�ll see his stuff with great big price-tags on it. He works in all
kinds of materials and is one hell of a silversmith, a goldsmith, a
jeweller, a salesman, a socializer - you name it."
"Does he ever do anything big?"
Luis nodded, took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at it. "I
was just going to tell you about the big contest he won last year.
For a monument to Columbus in New York or Washington. We did
his model here and sent it off. We did three other models too.
Everybody participated in the contest, all the big artists: Montserrat
had a nice one, that Englishman - what�s his name? - did one of his
things."
"Henry Moore?"
"Yes. Old Dal� sent a figure in too.
"I think even Molina was surprised when he won it. Columbus held
a flag in Alicantino (a red marble) and the caravel was in Marquina
(a black marble). The whole thing was a bit crazy but the
Americans ate it up." NEXT
