Our public art is plumbing new lows – this latest sculpture proves it
Expiring disgraced and destitute in a seedy Parisian hotel, Oscar Wilde remarked, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.” It is curious to imagine what Wilde’s keen aesthetic sense would have made of his latest memorial.
A sculpture of the writer by the late Sir Eduardo Paolozzi is to be erected on Dovehouse Green in Chelsea, not far from Wilde’s former home in Tite Street. A blackened bronze bust reclines on a plinth; its dandified cravat is neatly tied, but the head is segmented by jagged vertical slashes.
Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland, describes the work as “absolutely hideous”. But it is only the latest of Wilde’s effigies to attract controversy. His tombstone by Jacob Epstein in Père Lachaise cemetery was initially covered with a tarpaulin by Parisian officials, offended by its unfeasibly large testicles. In 2014 a glass barrier was erected, to discourage the tradition of imprinting lipstick kisses on the tomb.
Shortlisted in 1995 for a memorial to the author, Paolozzi’s sculpture was rejected in favour of Maggi Hambling’s effigy of Wilde emerging from a granite sarcophagus. That work was described by critics as “anodyne” and “loathsome” – apt descriptions of many recent examples of public statuary, including the Kensington Palace memorial bronze of Diana, Princess of Wales by Ian Rank-Broadley, whose masculine features recalled Coronation Street’s Ken Barlow.
The statue of the late Queen by Anto Brennan, unveiled this month in Antrim Castle Gardens, drew comparisons with Mrs Doubtfire, while Alluvia, a female figure by Jason deCaires Taylor, sunk in the River Stour in Canterbury, was condemned as “morbid”.
Stewart Ross, chair of the Canterbury Commemoration Society, which commissioned the work, offered a robust response: “If you don’t like it, don’t look.” But that is the problem with public art – it intrudes itself forcibly into your field of vision, and once seen, it can’t be unseen.
The Hambling Wilde, prominently sited behind St Martin’s in the Fields, is passed by thousands of people daily. Ditto the Kensington Diana, the Antrim Castle Queen – and soon the Chelsea Paolozzi. Their debatable artistic merit is the visual equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes: comically obvious to onlookers, but apparently invisible to the artists themselves and their commissioners.
Clothes may be the reason why our current public art is so lamentable. Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics are severe on the lack of gravitas of modern clothing – a view echoed by Wilde himself: “We have lost all nobility of dress and… almost destroyed the modern sculptor.”
Contemplating the terrible pencil skirt and oversized belt of the Kensington Diana statue, the Antrim Castle Queen’s quilted gilet and handbag, and the incongruous cravat of the Paolozzi Wilde, it is hard to disagree.
It is noticeable that public sculptures that combine beauty with emotional heft tend to be depictions of animals: Landseer’s noble Trafalgar Square lions, David Backhouse’s grandiose but moving Animals in War memorial, Andy Scott’s striking Kelpies and Jon Bickley’s endearing bronze of Dr Johnson’s cat, Hodge.
Whoever undertakes the forthcoming memorial to the late Queen, planned for the centenary of her birth in 2026, would do well to take note: no hat; no handbag (and no corgis – they are the exception to the rule that animals make engaging public art).
Like cats and dogs
The image of Prince, the new No 10 Siberian kitten, adorably posed on Sir Keir’s paperwork, may bring a much-needed fluffiness to the Prime Minister’s troubled image. But I worry about the jocular statement that its acquisition is the result of “negotiations” with the Starmer children, who really wanted a German shepherd dog.
Having lived with cats all my life, I now find myself unaccountably flirting with the idea of getting a dog. At the heart of my deliberations is the essential difference between feline and canine natures: aloof/needy; self-sufficient/affectionate.
Of course there are doggish cats and cattish dogs, but in the end, you have to decide. If a German shepherd was the Starmer children’s hearts’ desire, a Siberian kitten, however fluffy, is unlikely to be a satisfactory compromise. A thought that might be worth bearing in mind when it comes to negotiating with the TUC.