Mary Wollstonecraft memorial statue provokes mixed reaction

[JimW]

Not keen at first blush and definitely don't like the Oscar Wilde one, makes me think of those toys where you put a 2p piece on the box and a hand pops out to grab it.
How old is Hambling? Amazed she's still going, had her down as a pickled Soho eminence grise about twenty years ago.

 

[Raheem]

I want to like this just to be contrary, but it's too much effort.

Wonder if it will move for a bit if you give it money.

 

[brogdale]

must say i expected something along these lines
View attachment 238192
although obvs on a more manageable scale

or like this
View attachment 238193

That top one would go a treat on the top of Pollards Hill.

 

[Struwwelpeter]

“It will definitely start a conversation,” said the writer Bee Rowlatt, who has led the campaign to get a sculpture celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green, north London. “It will definitely promote comment and debate and that’s good, that’s what Mary did all her life.”

^^ People always say that about shit works of art.

People with pretty iffy views often say that as an excuse. It's beginning to head in the same direction as "I'm sorry if you were offended", "I misspoke", and is only a few steps away from "I deny any wrongdoing" and yelling "Woke snowflake!" at anyone who disagrees with you.

I'm not saying the sculptor is saying any of these things, but it is at best ill-judged. Anyone producing public art, funded by the public should be sensitive to how it is going to be received. That doesn't mean ruffling feathers isn't appropriate at times, but whatever the artist intended, the reaction and misinterpretation (if that is what it is) was foreseeable.

Edited to say what I meant to say.

 

[LDC]

The artist makes a sculpture as a tribute to a woman and it's of a naked woman, and then is suprised people might think the naked women on the sculpture might be assumed to be the women that the sculpture is a tribute to?! Is she really that surprised ffs?

It's tiny too, I wanted a huge statue like Pickman's model posted.

 

[Poot]

The artist makes a sculpture as a tribute to a woman and it's of a naked woman, and then is suprised people might think the naked women on the sculpture might be assumed to be the women the sculpture is a tribute to?! Is she really that surprised ffs?

Well quite. How many people could honestly say they know what MW (who lived before photography) looked like? It's quite logical to assume it is her.

 

[tonysingh]

This statue. Why is the naked woman emerging from the top of a giraffe x elephant hybrid?

 

[JimW]

Perhaps we can start a tradition of making her a seasonally appropriate little costume to wear every week? Then everyone's happy.

 

[killer b]

Perhaps we can start a tradition of making her a seasonally appropriate little costume to wear every week? Then everyone's happy.

a few days too late for a slutty vampire costume, gutted

 

[Doodler]

As a statue it's fucking terrible but you could stick a lamp holder on top of the woman's head and have a nice shade to go with it. Sell on Etsy.

 

[danny la rouge]

How old is Hambling? Amazed she's still going, had her down as a pickled Soho eminence grise about twenty years ago.

75.

She was on Grayson Perry’s lockdown art club programme, and she was utterly humourless and ostentatiously smoking a fag as if anyone cared. I think she enjoys being “misunderstood”. It’s what she aims for.

 

[Cid]

The scallop isn’t particularly good IMO. It’s also kind of shat on when you’ve got Hepworth at Snape nearby.

I find this also a bit shit. And a bit of a weird choice. I think I don’t like her materials in general. She’s certainly an interesting painter... but her record in sculpture just doesn’t seem great.

 

[JimW]

75.

She was on Grayson Perry’s lockdown art club programme, and she was utterly humourless and ostentatiously smoking a fag as if anyone cared. I think she enjoys being “misunderstood”. It’s what she aims for.

Just Googled and saw her age, noticed she went to private school too but hardly a surprise. Liked what I've seen of her paintings more than her sculptures.

 

[Pickman's model]

75.

She was on Grayson Perry’s lockdown art club programme, and she was utterly humourless and ostentatiously smoking a fag as if anyone cared. I think she enjoys being “misunderstood”. It’s what she aims for.

perhaps she should try to make people understand what she's aiming at by doing something they'd appreciate, which in this case might have been a statue of a woman clothed in c.1800 attire with a copy of 'vindication of the rights of women' under her arm

or a socialist realist statue of a woman in 1930s russian garb with a sickle in one hand and a copy of 'vindication of the rights of women' under her arm

 

[killer b]

that would have been pretty shit too tbf

 

[Pickman's model]

that would have been pretty shit too tbf

better than a slutty vampire costume mind

 

[LDC]

Being outraged or witheringly critical of any public art is one of our favourite national pastimes though, so she'll be keeping plenty of people happy in these hard times.

 

[Raheem]

Being outraged or witheringly critical of any public art is one of our favourite national pastimes though, so she'll be keeping plenty of people happy in these hard times.

Could be that, or it could just be that one of our favourite national pastimes is commissioning bad public art.

 

[emanymton]

This is quite troubling if an accurate quote:

Artist behind Mary Wollstonecraft statue says critics missed the point

Artist Maggi Hambling has said critics of her naked sculpture commemorating writer and feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft have missed the point.

www.standard.co.uk

Charitable interpretation would be that we would all like to be slim and in good health and it has nothing to do with physical attractiveness.

But given the subject matter it is problematic to say the least.

 

[quimcunx]

She also did the brixton heron/kookaburrah. Herne apparently means heron but it's not in herne hill. The heron is however allegedly a favourite of the artist.

 

[WouldBe]

This statue. Why is the naked woman emerging from the top of a giraffe x elephant hybrid?

Obviously women have been oppressed for ages by elephants and giraffes.



Shit statue.

 

[quimcunx]

At least shes got a big bush.

 

[LDC]

She was busy and then when it got close to the deadline, she was like "Fuck it, copy that doll, make it silver, and stick it on top of a load of melted metal shit, that'll do. I'll come up with the artistic explanation for it all later."

A few drinks later...

"This sculpture encourages a visual conversation with the obstacles Ms Wollstonecraft overcame, the ideals she strived for, and what she made happen. Clothes define people and restrict people, they restrict people's reaction. She's naked and she's every woman. Most male historic statues are way over life-size. My point was that the female figure doesn't need to dominate to be powerful. It's been compared to a rocket of hope going up to the sky, tracking the fight for female empowerment Wollstonecraft started."

^ Shit the artist actually said when asked btw.

 

[JimW]

Could be that, or it could just be that one of our favourite national pastimes is commissioning bad public art.

There was a period late 80s early 90s here when a fair few localities were just starting to feel a bit flush with the post-reform boom but the country was publicly pretty strait-laced even as the sex industry boomed and so on, and various local cadres commissioned statuary to celebrate the spirit of their town which inevitably would be a young woman with her tits out executed to a high school standard at best.

 

[SpookyFrank]

This is quite troubling if an accurate quote:

Artist behind Mary Wollstonecraft statue says critics missed the point

Artist Maggi Hambling has said critics of her naked sculpture commemorating writer and feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft have missed the point.

www.standard.co.uk

Bloody artists. I want people to respond to this work in their own way, unless they don't like it in which case their response is wrong because they're stupid.

I honestly doubt anyone is upset by the nakedness nearly so much as the fact the thing as a whole is ugly and shit.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

I'd need to see it in reality to really make a judgement but it looks pretty poor to me.
A small, anonymous, naked woman doesn't really feel like a fitting tribute to me.

 

[Raheem]

She also did the brixton heron/kookaburrah. Herne apparently means heron but it's not in herne hill. The heron is however allegedly a favourite of the artist.

If she's into that sort of literalism, she missed a trick by not crafting this one from a stone wall.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Looking at the face, it appears to be a self-portrait of Hambling c.1970.

I kind of like it at first glance. There's something pleasingly muscular about the mass the body sprouts from. Agree that it does not appear really to be anything to do with Wollstonecraft, though.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'd need to see it in reality to really make a judgement but it looks pretty poor to me.
A small, anonymous, naked woman doesn't really feel like a fitting tribute to me.

not even a kipper could improve it

 

[belboid]

If anyone wanted a ‘traditional’ sculpture they would never have hired Maggi Hambling to do the job. I like her Oscar Wilde and Scallop, though this one does look less, well, interesting.