Critics ‘Missing the whole story’ behind the artwork

Highwood, Ill. – The day after attending the unveiling of the Dwyane Wade statue outside the Kaseya Center in Miami, the artist behind the unintentionally provocative work, Omri Amrany, was back in his suburban Chicago art enclave, focused on his litany of future projects.

“I don’t check the comments at all — one of the many things I don’t do — because I keep my brain open to dreams and possibilities and to looking ahead,” he told a reporter while standing in the front aisle of art studio, he and his wife, Julie Rotblatt Amrany, have operated in this space since 2005.

A sign on the front door of the red brick building read: “We regret that we cannot invite you inside as we are hard at work sculpting several proprietary projects.”

But on Wednesday afternoon, Amrany agreed to invite Sportico into the studio on the condition that none of its ongoing projects, which include those of other famous sports figures, would be reported on or photographed.

Over the previous 48 hours, the Wade sculpture had been subjected to a name, image and likeness debate of sorts among sports fans: namely, whether the statue’s expression of outspoken supremacy captured Wade’s essence. The verdict, according to the trendy social media hordes—and self-styled art critics like Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal—was that it had failed.

On their Inside the NBA show on TNT, Barkley suggested that the statue be taken down and redone. Shaq wrote it off as the “scariest thing this Halloween,” apparently unaware that he was insulting the work of a man who had previously memorialized him in bronze.

The purpose of their ridicule was designed to capture Wade’s demonstrative reaction to hitting a game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer for the Miami Heat in a 2009 home win against the Chicago Bulls, his hometown team. After making the shot, Wade jumped on top of a sideline scorer’s table in what was then called American Airlines Arena while yelling “this is my house” to an adoring crowd. Wade, who retired from basketball in 2019, has referred to this as his “favorite individual moment of my career.”

For his part, Wade has rallied in the statue’s defense, saying it lived up to his vision.

“The commission (of art) is a triangle between the client, the subject and the artist,” said Amrany, who worked on the project with Oscar Leon, one of seven artists working from the Rotblatt Amrany studios. “And the end result of this triangle will probably stand on a pedestal to be reviewed by the rest of the world.”

Here’s what Amrany hopes the world will eventually come to understand: The purpose of the sculpture was not intended to be a product of portrait realism, but to capture the essence and story behind the subject. The sculptor insists he has no problem with criticism of his work, but believes his recent detractors have failed to gasp at this distinction.

“They’re missing the whole story of a kid who had nothing who became everything, and that was his expression when he jumped on the table and told his hometown team, ‘This is my house,'” Amrany said. “This is a wonderful American story that they’re missing because what they want is a very boring face. And I’m sorry, they’re not going to get that from me.”

Wade’s sculpture was unveiled nearly 30 years to the date of Amrany and his wife’s most famous sports creation, the Michael Jordan statue at the United Center. Known as “The Spirit”, the figure of a mid-flight MJ helped launch the subgenre of sportscast metal and became the calling card of the Rotblatt Amrany studio. Amrany said the Bulls paid $250,000 for the commission, but he did not say how much the Heat paid for Wade.

In the three decades since the conjuring of The Spirit, the Rotblatt Amrany studio has produced bronze statues to celebrate the achievements of Kobe Bryant, Barry Sanders, Dirk Nowitzki, Bob Cousy, David Beckham, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Bobby Hull, Vince Lombardi and the aforementioned Shaq, among many other notable athletes and coaches. In total, the studio has completed over 300 projects around the world, from individual busts to municipal parks.

But as Amrany recalled, when the Jordan Statute was publicly unveiled at a press conference on November 1, 1994, it was not met with praise. Rather, there were a number of initial complaints from the public and the media about the way it portrayed Jordan’s face, including the decision to keep the Hall of Famer’s famous wagging tongue hidden behind his lips.

“They didn’t like that his face wasn’t straight off a cereal box,” Amrany said. “They didn’t want what (Jordan) said he wanted. And they didn’t know because they didn’t meet him, they didn’t sit with him.”

This experience mercifully long predated the era of social media and the current “world of algorithms,” as Amrany puts it. The peanut gallery is infinitely more critical and full in 2024.

“I mean, after 20 articles (about Wade’s sculpture) in the last three days,” Amrany said, “what you become is not famous, but infamous.”

Although undeterred, he said he had noted the experience for future reference.

“Maybe even next time I’ll suggest (the subject) that they’re aware of what (reaction) you’re going to get,” Amrany said.