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The writer is author of ‘Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History’
The unveiling of a new statue of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip has, in the polite euphemism of news reports, “divided opinion”. The bronze in Antrim Castle Gardens near Belfast, depicts the late queen in country clothing with corgis at her feet. It has been added to a pre-existing statue of Prince Philip in a suit. The Times’s art critic pronounced the queen’s likeness “unrecognisable”. Locals and social media users deemed it “an abomination” and “laughably bad”. “Melt it down and start again,” wrote one.
Antrim’s new piece of statuary is nowhere near the first to provoke snorts and giggles instead of reverence. Last month, Meta billionaire Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a large and extremely turquoise statue of his wife Priscilla Chan, wrapped in a tinfoil swirl. Mercifully, it stands in his own garden. Monstrosities such as Madeira Airport’s wonky Cristiano Ronaldo bust and Slovenia’s clumsy wooden Melania Trump statue were inflicted on public spaces. Slovenians expressed their artistic response by burning Trump’s statue down. It was replaced with a bronze version.
One of the reasons honorific portrait statuary can go wrong is that it tends to be the pet project of a zealous individual or special interest group. The sponsor’s own concept of artistic merit frequently goes untested on critics or the public until unveiling. This dates back at least to the 19th century craze known as “statuemania”, when thousands of statues went up in Europe, the US and their colonial peripheries. The artist Edgar Degas complained: “One puts iron wire around the lawns of public gardens to prevent sculptors from depositing their works therein.”
It was often claimed that the funds for these statues were raised by public subscription. In truth, the zealous individual usually paid for it him or (occasionally) herself, and then tried to persuade local authorities to put it somewhere. In the 1910s, London rejected American millionaire Charles Phelps Taft’s statue of Abraham Lincoln after a fierce campaign led by Lincoln’s son Robert. The statue was described as looking like “a tramp with the colic”. The Times feared it was so bad it might damage Anglo-American relations. Still, Taft managed to get his statue raised in Manchester, where it now stands in Lincoln Square.
Sculptor Tom Church’s “Freedom” statue of William Wallace, modelled after actor Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart, was repeatedly vandalised when Stirling Council allowed it to go up in a car park by the National Wallace Monument. After several attempts to donate it to new locations it finally found a home with Brechin City Football Club.
The frenetic overuse of honorific portrait statuary by 20th century dictators such as Stalin, Mussolini and the North Korean Kim dynasty loaded the form with kitsch and lent it unpleasant political associations. Yet modern public memorial art can be extraordinarily moving. Along the Danube bank in the centre of Budapest, a line of life-size iron shoes commemorates the Jews who, during the second world war, were forced to take their shoes off before being shot and dumped in the river. It is breathtaking. So is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, which memorialises the victims of lynchings on solemn steel blocks hanging above visitors’ heads.
A few pieces of modern honorific statuary have found favour with the public. The Eric Morecambe statue in Morecambe Bay and the Beatles ones on Liverpool waterfront are both popular.
But unless it is done with a twist of wit or inventiveness, the form is inherently naff: nostalgic, pompous, and mired in a plodding literalism that even the finest craftsmanship cannot overcome.
The spectacle of thousands of people quietly queueing to pay their respects to the queen when she lay in state could be seen as a work of art in itself: a folk memorial far more poignant than any statue. Sometimes the greatest public art is created by the public.
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