Yesterday, Ronaldo made an appearance at a ceremony to rename a Portugal airport in his name. That ceremony was totally overshadowed by the bust that was revealed at the event.
The sculpture looked nothing like Ronaldo, as exemplified by the picture below.
Obviously, with Ronaldo’s stardom and attention to his looks, the statue went viral and people across the world were making jokes about it.
Well, the man forgot in a lot of this is the person who made it, who responded to criticism today. He made no apologies for the statue, defending its appearance in an interview with The Guardian:
“It is impossible to please the Greeks and Trojans. Neither did Jesus please everyone.
This is a matter of taste, so it is not as simple as it seems. What matters is the impact that this work generated. There is always the possibility of making a difference, I was prepared for all this. I used as a base some photos of Cristiano Ronaldo that I found on the internet, nothing specific.
I put the photos next to me and started working on the bust.
Cristiano saw the photos that his brother sent him. I was with the brother at Cristiano’s museum in Madeira and from the messages he sent, I could tell that he liked what he saw. He only asked for some wrinkles that give him a certain expression in his face when he’s about to laugh to be changed. He said it made him look older and asked for it to be thinned out a bit to make it smoother and more jovial.
But they gave it the go-ahead; they liked what they saw.”
He’s right, it is impossible to please someone, but we’d be surprised if this thing pleased anyone. Sculpting is not an easy thing to do, but that doesn’t mean the internet isn’t going to have a blast with it. He’s correct in that the impact this work generated is much more significant than many other statues would have.
Hopefully Ronaldo is a “No press is bad press” kind of guy.
