No problem. I suspect I would have made the same mistake if I hadn’t read that part.
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The Memorial is to Mary Wollstonecraft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft) not Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley) her Daughter.
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Anniversary Dinner
Me: Hey honey! I painting this picture to honor you on your anniversary.
Señora: Uh, that’s not me. That’s some naked chick.
Me: Yeah but it’s in your honor!
Señora throws water in my face and leaves restaurant
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the funny thing is that i had read the actual article and knew it was wollstonecraft when i asked me questions at the top of the thread.
i was so surprised at the nature of the statue that i didn’t even notice frauenfelder had mentioned shelley.
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Some art does that, some other art doesn’t. There’s not really a rulebook for art.
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Her sculpture of Oscar Wilde is even worse. She apparently has friends in the British aristocracy, and thereby gets these commissions for public statues.
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…because nothing says, “feminism” quite like a naked, ripped female form…
/s
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Given that Mary Wollstonecroft died quite soon after giving birth to Mary Shelly, it does a real disservice to conflate two brilliant minds who never had the chance to collaborate. Moreover, it’s not exactly in the spirit of Wollstonecraft’s hopes to be the “first of a new genus”.
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I can see what Hambling was going for, and I felt a lot better about this piece before seeing her Oscar Wilde piece, which looks like some sort of Pastafarian theophany.
Anyway, yeah, a strong female nude arising from a bunch of semi-amorphous “feminine” forms makes some sense of me for Wollstonecraft. And I don’t see that nude on the top as eroticized. If anything, the semi-veiled form below it looks more like one of those ecstatic reclined nudes you might see as a product of “the male gaze.” So the woman on top transcends or overcomes all that to emerge as herself.
But, wow, that Wilde thing…
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I corrected it before you wrote this.
It clearly was, though - the artist’s own website, quoted above, is talking about how an image of Mary Wollstonecraft is to be the used to create this conversation about her work. (There was some confusion here between Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, but it still doesn’t much look like Mary Wollstonecraft.) It’s described as a memorial to her and compared to other memorials and their depictions of their male subjects, and how those have become springboards for starting discussions about the works of the subjects of the memorials.
So… yeah, it’s intended to be a memorial to her, her “presence in a physical form,” to honor and inspire discussions about her work. I mean, a giveaway is in the name - the statue has always been referred to as “Mary on the Green.”
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What about Chuck Tingle?
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Sorry, but I cannot see anything quoted from Maggi Hambling’s website above. Nor, on her website, can I see any reference to this statue. Am I overlooking something? Link, please.
Just a heads-up, the BBS companion topic didn’t update automatically when you updated the Boing Boing post.
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Thank you! Fixed.
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Mark’s quoted text in the comment above is from the artist’s fundraising website. The bit that talks about the statue being “[Mary Wollstonecraft’s] presence in a physical form” and how an image of Mary is needed for the public space. The website talks, repeatedly, about how the “Mary on the Green” statue is a memorial to Wollstonecraft (i.e. it depicts her) as a balance for all the male public figures memorialized in statues in London. It really couldn’t get any more clear.
Edit: specifically: http://maryonthegreen.org/project.shtml
“Over 90% of London’s monuments celebrate men…The memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft will be a source of debate and stimulus for events, as well as a visual celebration of diversity and inclusion in a place that needs it more than ever.”
Me neither. I imagined a small cute car with 4 baby legs…
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It is not the artist’s fundraising website. The artist is Maggi Hambling.
The website is that of the campaign to raise funds for a public memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft. It is not the artist’s website. Hence my confusion at your comment.
A memorial is not a depiction in the sense you seem to be using it, to mean a physical likeness. A plaque can be a memorial. The Cenotaph is a memorial. To say “a memorial … (i.e. it depicts her)” in the sense you use it is a significant misinterpretation. If it said “a depiction” you’d have a good point.
A presence in physical form does not mean a physical likeness. It simply means that an actual physical thing (“physical form”) is, and represents, the presence of MW in a public space, where previously she was not represented at all in any public space.
The website itself refers to: “The Memorial: a symbol of her legacy in a public statue/work of art”. A symbol.
Also, for anyone confusing the reference to Churchill on the same page, the text says
Just as the image of Churchill’s memorial statue is used in debates on his legacy, the same is needed for Mary Wollstonecraft.
This is not saying that ‘because his statue looks like him…’ it is saying that the image of his statue (and the image of MW’s statue) is/will be used in debates on their respective legacies.
I have no issue with anyone disliking the statue as a work of art. Or even disliking the form of it (nudity) in this context. But decrying it for pretending to look like her when it does not pretend that, or decrying it simply because it does not look like her, are just entirely missing the whole point.
I.e. Mark’s headline may be correct. It may be a bad statue. But if it is, it is not bad simply because it does not look like her.
ETA nobody seems to have posted a pic of the full thing. The inscription on the plinth says 'for Mary Wollstonecraft". Maggi Hambling says it is ‘not of her but for her and about her ideas’. (Very slight paraphrase from news item on BBC a few minutes ago.)
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