Mary Wollstonecraft memorial statue provokes mixed reaction

[platinumsage]

I'm not sure the naked barbie doll fits with the rest of her work at all, just the random stuff underneath.

This is her sculpture in her Aftermath series titled "Mother":

 

[bimble]

Better or worse?

 

[LDC]

Better or worse?

Un-controversially absolutely brilliant. I especially like the wrap-round film display on the plinth. All statues need that.

 

[ska invita]

View attachment 238392

Another thought about seeing it in situ, youd be having to look up really high to see the form at the top - shes getting on for being 3 times as high as you are - I can imagine that working

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Ectoplasm?

 

[TopCat]

Another thought about seeing it in situ, youd be having to look up really high to see the form at the top - shes getting on for being 3 times as high as you are - I can imagine that working

Showing truncated pictures really changes the tone.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Better or worse?

Multimedia art. Very modern.

 

[Artaxerxes]

You know what, lets put the shoe on the other foot...lets look at how people might react to a statue of Fred Dibnah...say he gets memorialised in a statue as a muscle toned young man with his penis out.

That would not represent who he was would it?

To be fair, if we're doing a proper comparison to a feminist statue, mens rights campaigners are very likely to be really happy to be depicted as a muscle bound massive dicked adonis

 

[Aladdin]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If it fits with the rest of her work and that's her "brand" then that's how she projects herself as an artist. Which makes complete sense.

It doesnt really fit with her "brand".
The base does fit but the teeny add on woman doesnt.
It's a pity she didnt just leave it as the base.
Much more interesting.

 

[Gromit]

Better or worse?

It’s better than cat statues.
Yeah Egypt I’m talking about you.

 

[Gromit]

Double post.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

DP

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Better or worse?

That's brilliant. Crazy despot art at its best.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

It doesnt really fit with her "brand".
The base does fit but the teeny add on woman doesnt.
It's a pity she didnt just leave it as the base.
Much more interesting.

I'm not familiar enough with her work to know but it does feel like the base and the woman don't really belong together.
I'm going to have to go and have a look though. Just because it's so bloody controversial (on here at least) and because let's face it, there's fuck all else to do right now.

 

[Aladdin]

I'm not familiar enough with her work to know but it does feel like the base and the woman don't really belong together.
I'm going to have to go and have a look though. Just because it's so bloody controversial (on here at least) and because let's face it, there's fuck all else to do right now.

 

[8ball]

It doesnt really fit with her "brand".
The base does fit but the teeny add on woman doesnt.
It's a pity she didnt just leave it as the base.
Much more interesting.

Can’t see how “Generic Blob No. 58” would have been more interesting, but then I don’t know much about art.

Thank fuck tiny woman’s bare ankles weren’t showing is all I can say.

 

[JuanTwoThree]

Kylie Minogue standing on a piece of drift wood. All silver. Screams 'pioneering thinker'

 

[scifisam]

Although the alternative design was more conventional, it does have a couple of aspects I like:



The expression on her face is defiant, rather than blank.

And the semi-circle around her says "come and join me in this cause." People will sit next to her while eating their lunch, or local kids on a local history walk. It's welcoming, not exclusionary.

That's very simple, but I prefer it to "I have no facial expression and I'm tiny and too high up to see easily."

The Hambling one I don't mind as a piece of art at all. It just doesn't seem related to Wollstonecraft and the size makes it not really very effective as public art. Bear in mind it'll look even tinier in the open than on camera. It couldn't make more of a statement about women as unimportant, really.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

And the semi-circle around her says "come and join me in this cause." People will sit next to her while eating their lunch, or local kids on a local history walk. It's welcoming, not exclusionary.

That's a nice thought - that would have been really good yes.

 

[Pickman's model]

4 cops keeping an eye on the statue. None of them women.

 

[Gromit]

Although the alternative design was more conventional, it does have a couple of aspects I like:

View attachment 238518

The expression on her face is defiant, rather than blank.

And the semi-circle around her says "come and join me in this cause." People will sit next to her while eating their lunch, or local kids on a local history walk. It's welcoming, not exclusionary.

That's very simple, but I prefer it to "I have no facial expression and I'm tiny and too high up to see easily."

The Hambling one I don't mind as a piece of art at all. It just doesn't seem related to Wollstonecraft and the size makes it not really very effective as public art. Bear in mind it'll look even tinier in the open than on camera. It couldn't make more of a statement about women as unimportant, really.

And there’s books.

 

[Aladdin]

4 cops keeping an eye on the statue. None of them women.

Yep. Tiny woman could well end up on someone's art deco mantelpiece.

 

[Brainaddict]

I'm not sure the naked barbie doll fits with the rest of her work at all, just the random stuff underneath.

This is her sculpture in her Aftermath series titled "Mother":

View attachment 238495

Is even that any good? Looks like something you'd see in a squat party art show where you're walking round going 'nope, the drugs didn't make the artist any more interesting'

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Although the alternative design was more conventional, it does have a couple of aspects I like:

View attachment 238518

And the semi-circle around her says "come and join me in this cause." People will sit next to her while eating their lunch, or local kids on a local history walk. It's welcoming, not exclusionary.

Reminded me of this passage from Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed"

"Some ways before him, down the darkening path, a person sat reading on a stone bench. Shevek went forward slowly. He came to the bench and stood looking at the figure who sat with head bowed over the book in the green-gold dusk under the trees. It was a woman of fifty or sixty, strangely dressed, her hair pulled back in a knot. Her left hand on her chin nearly hid the stern mouth, her right held the papers on her knee. They were heavy, those papers; the cold hand on them was heavy. The light was dying fast but she never looked up. She went on reading the proof sheets of The Social Organism. Shevek looked at Odo for a while, and then he sat down on the bench beside her. He had no concept of status at all, and there was plenty of room on the bench. He was moved by a pure impulse of companionship. He looked at the strong, sad profile, and at the hands, an old woman’s hands. He looked up into the shadowy branches. For the first time in his life he comprehended that Odo, whose face he had known since his infancy, whose ideas were central and abiding in his mind and the mind of everyone he knew, that Odo had never set foot on Anarres: that she had lived, and died, and was buried, in the shadow of green-leaved trees, in unimaginable cities, among people speaking unknown languages, on another world. Odo was an alien: an exile. The young man sat beside the statue in the twilight, one almost as quiet as the other."

 

[platinumsage]

Is even that any good? Looks like something you'd see in a squat party art show where you're walking round going 'nope, the drugs didn't make the artist any more interesting'

That’s what a lot of modern art is. You make a name for yourself and then you can chuck out random crap and people feel obliged to interpret it as something meaningful. And it seems if you then stick a naked woman on it, you‘ll even get multiple Guardian articles.

 

[Brainaddict]

That’s what a lot of modern art is. You make a name for yourself and then you can chuck out random crap and people feel obliged to interpret it as something meaningful. And it seems if you then stick a naked woman on it, you‘ll even get multiple Guardian articles.

So it seems. It's just very generic. I feel like I've seen the 'molten something frozen in time' sculpture motif in so many mediocre shows. And definitely probably some of them thought up by people on ket and acid muttering 'inchoate...forces...emergent...life' to themselves at 5am and thinking they're geniuses. I'm not one for ranting against all conceptual art, but this really seems to be a big name churning out shite.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So it seems. It's just very generic. I feel like I've seen the 'molten something frozen in time' sculpture motif in so many mediocre shows. And definitely probably some of them thought up by people on ket and acid muttering 'inchoate...forces...emergent...life' to themselves at 5am and thinking they're geniuses. I'm not one for ranting against all conceptual art, but this really seems to be a big name churning out shite.

It's not conceptual art. It's abstract art.

 

[Brainaddict]

It's not conceptual art. It's abstract art.

I stand corrected

 

[Reno]

Not living in the UK, this has passed me by till I saw the sculpture. I though it's a bad joke. Then I checked who was responsible for this atrocity and all became clear. Maggi Hambling got where she is because she's great at self promotion, she is "a character" who goes down well on chat shows but she's probably the worst major artist in the UK. Her work is hideously ugly, like when kitsch gets cancer and it's always derivative of far better artists. A critic once described her paintings as "Rolf Harris trying to paint like Francis Bacon". 2020 strikes again, Mary Wollstonecraft deserves better.

 

[Aladdin]

This is Maggi Hamblings portrait of
Andy Murray


I'll just leave it there.......