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The Mad Viking
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of the Great White North
Feb 2000
time: 05:37
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People have some strange ideas about sculpture.
Sculpture has been deliberately contentious for centuries. The sculpture in the main piazza in Bologna, for example, right in front of the cathedral was installed in the Renaissance, but is outrageously sexy, with a naked (pagan) Neptune standing over 8 naked, cavorting nymphs, four of which are holding their large water-gushing breast up for closer display.
I think "Alison Lapper Pregnant" is a terrific work, and I think it says even more by its placement alongside military heroes.
I would say that we have more than enough military history, and not nearly enough "mothery" history.
If you are disturbed by the sculpture, that is fine. But you should ask yourself "Why?"
Don't just assume that since you are disturbed, therefore, "The sculpture is wrong and I am right, QED."
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:37
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[QUOTE] Originally posted by The Mad Viking
People have some strange ideas about sculpture.
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Sculpture has been deliberately contentious for centuries. The sculpture in the main piazza in Bologna, for example, right in front of the cathedral was installed in the Renaissance, but is outrageously sexy, with a naked (pagan) Neptune standing over 8 naked, cavorting nymphs, four of which are holding their large water-gushing breast up for closer display. |
Would that be controversial - from what I understand of the Renaissance church, such a sculpture could well have been commisioned by the Bishop 
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I would say that we have more than enough military history, and not nearly enough "mothery" history. |
I dont think this Allison Lapper is actually a historically famous mother, is she?
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If you are disturbed by the sculpture, that is fine. But you should ask yourself "Why?" |
I didnt say I was disturbed. But clearly (and unsurprisingly) some people are. Again, I dont know that public sculpture is the right medium to proselytize for new values.
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MosesPresley
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quote:
Originally posted by lord of the mark
I can think of few things more humane than a Calder mobile.
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I was referring more to the abstracts that came after Pollock's time. The pretty little designs that you see on the walls of most offices and restaurants. Although I find very little that is human in a Calder. Calder's work is cold and intellectual. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
I don't know about where you live, but the office buildings here have very little imagination. The exception being the Hercules building.
http://www.maypinska.com/pages/proj...ildbodyherc.htm
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Originally posted by lord of the mark
And i would suggest that people who want their definitions of beauty and sexuality challenged can go to a museum or gallery for that.
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In a free society, if freedom is to have any real value, you have to have the right to say things that people will not like.
This sculpture is not simply a sexual agitprop. It rises above that. We are killing any beauty this piece might have by talking it to death. Art should not be over intellectualized.
The subtext is sexual. On the surface it is simply what it portrays: a deformed pregnat woman. I am sure most people are not, consciously at least, sexually responding to it.
Art is now inherently a public phenomenom.
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Originally posted by lord of the mark
The problem becomes when artists, and public authorities, use public art to challenge and subvert peoples values
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I hardly call an honest and non exagerated depiction of a deformed pregnant naked woman subversive. What values are being subverted here exactly? The right to hate and hide people with deformities?
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Originally posted by lord of the mark
If we dont have any shared values any more (which is quite possible) then using public art decoratively may be the best we can hope for. |
What shared values are being violated by this sculpture?
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:37
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no.
would i tell her that i don't think much of the sculpture, and that it doesn't belong there? yes.
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:37
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which is getting off the point a bit, the point being laughing at some of the ridiculous things said in this thread so far.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:37
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quote:
Originally posted by C0ckney
when trolling in future, i'll remember to take your bitterness into account 
but seriously, IW makes a very good point. there are so many things they could have put there which would have been more suitable and looked better.  |
That's okay, I always take your lack of knowledge of recent history into account- that huge void known to you as the 'Thatcher Era'.
More 'suitable' and 'looked better'.....
The statue has a fine surface finish, and has a heroic aspect- the head is very reminiscent in profile of the head of Constantine or Michelangelo's David- which I suspect may have been Quinn's intention.
He's addressing preconceptions of what is 'suitable' and what is 'acceptable' in public art- we have any number of dull as ditchwater statues commemorating war heroes and politicians- dotted all around Whitehall and St James's, but very few that actually look heroic, rather than constipated Victorian patriarchs.
The vacant plinth has been used for public art over the past few years:
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The vacant plinth in Trafalgar Square is to become a showcase for contemporary art.
The panel set up to decide its future rejected a range of historical tributes and outlandish ideas, saying the site will become an ever-changing display of artworks of our period.
Author Sir John Mortimer, who chaired the body, said it had decided to celebrate the present and not the past.
"It offers a period of great excitement and a celebration of our artistic revival and the vitality and vivacity of this moment, as opposed to the great moments of the past," he said.
One further suggestion the panel is keen to push forward is a monument to slavery for the year 2007, marking the 200th anniversary of the bill to abolish the practice in this country.
Sir John said: "We believe this will be a most fitting scene for the sculpture in that year, an idea put to us most eloquently by the late Bernie Grant MP and Baroness Ros Howells."
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/745962.stm
I doubt anyone could actually name the other occupants of the plinths without recourse to a book or a website- people remember Landseer's lions, and Nelson's column, but two nineteenth century military figures ?
A none-too-inspiring monarch ?
Quinn's statue of another artist is in a long tradition of public art and statues of naked females- only in this instance she's pregnant, obviously has a disability, and is depicted in an heroic pose designed to remind people of classical art.
Job well done, I'd say.
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C0ckney
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Big Up The Macedonian Massive
Apr 2000
time: 05:37
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yeah so, like i said, your bitterness...
as for statue itself, IW put it better than i ever could in this post
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I have realised why I take issue with this. Trafalgar Square is not (or at least, should not, IMO be) an art gallery. It is a place where we have statues. And yes, Ozzy, the statues may not be of people who are very famous (now), or even particularly worth honouring and remembering, but they are there as representations of that person. Put a sculpture representing the beauty of two-limbed motherhood in a gallery, or by all means put a statue of Alison Lapper on the plinth, if anyone thinks she deserves it, but put her up there in bronze and with some clothes on. |
100%
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:37
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quote:
Originally posted by C0ckney
yeah so, like i said, your bitterness...
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Gosh, is hot air going cheap near you ?
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...but put her up there in bronze and with some clothes on. |
There's no requirement that the statue be bronze, or any other metal.
Many of Whitehall's and St James's statues (and indeed London's) statues are stone- notice the stone statue of Charles II in Soho Square.
It seems that with regard to Trafalgar Square some people are never satisfied:
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Writing in 1886, W. J. Nettleship, a distinguished painter of lions, was still criticising Landseer's lions:
"The Trafalgar Square lions must be quietly damned, because, pretending to be done from nature, they absolutely miss the true sculptural quality which distinguishes the leonine pose, and because a lion couched like that has not a concave back like a greyhound, but a convex back, greatly ennobled in line from the line of a cat's back in the same position."
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Not just the lions were flak-catchers- the humans too:
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Napier in particular was sneered at on every possible occasion. An example:
One trembles to think how certain hideous statues, such as the Napier in Trafalgar Square, would shock the public eye if their kindly black shroud were suddenly removed [by cleaning]. - Magazine of Art |
http://www.speel.demon.co.uk/paint/lions.htm
Some of London's monuments are male or female nudes- again, there's a statue of a semi-naked love god in Piccadilly Circus (disfigured by wings- more disability!!!)
and one of a particularly erotically charged David at Hyde Park Corner commemorating the Machine Gun Corps:
http://www.artandarchitecture.org.u...y/10938e8d.html
Apparently his luscious buttocks have been known to cause road traffic accidents...
Then of course there's the rather chubby and camp Canning in a toga in Parliament Square... and of course the shambling modernist Churchill- oops! another public figure with a disability...
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:37
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quote:
I was referring more to the abstracts that came after Pollock's time. The pretty little designs that you see on the walls of most offices and restaurants. |
Which, hence are not public art.
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Although I find very little that is human in a Calder. Calder's work is cold and intellectual. Not that there is anything wrong with that. |
I find Calder light and humourous. A sense of play, of wind and motion. I suppose its mental play, but I find mental play to be profoundly human. And humane. Perhaps we have a classicist vs romantic thing going here?
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I don't know about where you live, but the office buildings here have very little imagination. The exception being the Hercules building. |
I live in DC where most office buildings lack imagination. They did so long before modernism was dreamt of. I have lived in New York, and in Cambridge, MA both of which have quite a few examples of very fine, humane modernism. Modern architecture was a complex movement, with very humanist goals for the most part. Like many idealist movements it failed in large part, but its successes have often been overlooked in the reaction against it.
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In a free society, if freedom is to have any real value, you have to have the right to say things that people will not like. |
Yes. But you dont necessarily have the right to scream it in their face. I cant take over a public plaza for a demonstration without a permit, even though I can print whatever I want in a newpaper, or say whatever I want on my property. A public sculpture is like that demonstration, repeated every day. Its a privilege, not a right.
I'd like to put up a statue to, say, Ariel Sharon in Trafalgar Square. Think I can do that?
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This sculpture is not simply a sexual agitprop. It rises above that. We are killing any beauty this piece might have by talking it to death. Art should not be over intellectualized. |
Well, given how many peoples gut reaction was that they didnt like it, it seems that talking about it was necessary to defend it. Again, thats the issue with a public art. If it was in a museum, you could just say, look at it, react to it. We dont have to comment on the Museums decision to show it. By putting it in public you invite debate.
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The subtext is sexual. On the surface it is simply what it portrays: a deformed pregnat woman. I am sure most people are not, consciously at least, sexually responding to it. |
I dont know.
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Art is now inherently a public phenomenom. |
Im not sure what that means.
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I hardly call an honest and non exagerated depiction of a deformed pregnant naked woman subversive. What values are being subverted here exactly? The right to hate and hide people with deformities? |
The notion that the nude human body should only be presented in art as a celebration of human physcial beauty and perfection, and that certain criteria exist for the human physical beauty (which, by the way, are NOT the same criteria that should be applied for the right to work, to have access to places etc, - I am displeased that you are trying to make this about disability rights - some of my best friends are disability rights activists, thank you very much, and are active in the organization I linked to - Im trying to discuss the nature of public art)
And again Im not saying I share the above values - Im quite aware that art in the last few decades has taken to the use of the nude for other purposes than celebrating physical beauty - yes, ive seen Lucian Freud. But I suspect lots of folks who go through Trafalgar Square either have not seen Lucian Freud, or dont like his work. Again, this seems like an attempt to impost certain values on the "vulgar" public.
Well vulgar publics dont like that very much, I think. You can hardly be surprised if people react badly.
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Cort Haus
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London
Apr 2002
time: 05:37
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Calling a person ugly dehumanizes them. |
If we are denied ugliness, can there be beauty?
Is it really "dehumanising" to have an aesthetically negative response? Personally, I do not find someone with stumpy legs and arms attractive. I expect there are sound principles of evolution at work here, not an evil rejection of disabled people. Of course, unusual body shapes will always have their fans, and I guess that's a good thing, especially for the people with unusual body shapes.
For me the statue represents the contemporary cult of victimhood - where heroic status is confered upon people who have had things happen to them rather than by doing something heroic.
The snorts of disgust aimed at Nelson (who was crippled defending his country) and the bowing and scraping before an image of a woman who was just unlucky says a lot about our national sport of self-deprecation, and the cult of the victim. OTOH, if there'd been a statue of Stephen Hawking - that would have been far more inspiring.
The idea that critics of this work also object to the very-sensible wheel-ramps in public is disingenuous, and might demonstrate that political posturing, not aesthetic judgement, is driving some people's reaction.
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16-09-2005 00:11
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