MILLICENT FAWCETT-MORE MEDIOCRE SCULPTURE

I have touched on the subject of modern figurative sculpture and the nature of sculptural  quality or lack of it in an earlier post. Here I discuss the very new  sculpture of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square.It is another of Ms Wearing's productions.The following should really be read in conjunction with my earlier post which illustrates examples of what would generally be accepted as poor  or good quality modelling.

Millicent Fawcett staue, Parliament Square, Gillian Wearing,installed 2018. 

 It took until 2018 for a statue of an important suffragist to arrive in Parliament Square. In typical British fashion there isn't quite a consistent theme in the choice of subjects for sculptures in the Square.Is this some kind of British pantheon? But statues of Lincoln and Mandela  among many others are  there. Personally I can see no reason for Mandela's presence other than blind sentiment. I admire Lincoln but  both he and Mandela were foreigners. They only go to prove that, worthies though they may be the choice of subjects for public sculpture in the UK is at best capricious.  But this new sculpture is a mediocre piece of work and that is nothing to celebrate at all. It is true that most of the statues in Parliament Square are of poor quality.  And this example, on the evidence of photos is no exception.

 Ms Wearing is no modeller. Mrs Fawcett's head looks blocklike and lacking animation. She and her team have produced nothing which rivals Nigel Boonham's recent Martin Luther King.

It is obvious that I am not the only one wondering why Ms Wearing was chosen. Here is a letter to the Guardian from Martin Jennings with which-at least on the nature of the modelling- I agree. Mr Jennings is a sculptor. He is one of those catering to the current UK craze for commemoration. He is not correct to say that A Real Birmingham Family is her (only) "other misguided foray into the artform". She and her teams have produced similar works in Italy and Denmark. On photographic evidence it seems that the quality is again very poor.

Contemporary sculpture is a broad field comprising multiple forms of practice. Sculptors do their best work when they deploy their proven expertise rather than when they wander into other areas of which they have little experience. You wouldn’t appoint a plumber to fix your wiring, so why ask a conceptual artist to make your statue?
It is dismaying to see that Gillian Wearing, a celebrated and interesting conceptual artist, has been chosen to make the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square (Report, 14 April). There are several women sculptors in this country with the necessary years of specific experience required to erect a compelling statue in Parliament Square next to Epstein’s figure of Jan Smuts and Ivor Roberts Jones’s great monument to Churchill. Wearing is not one of them, as evidenced by her one misguided foray into the artform to date – the lamentably formless A Real Birmingham Family. We are told she was selected to make the statue of Fawcett by so-called “cultural leaders”. What bias led these experts to ignore the evidence that Wearing’s abilities lie elsewhere?
Martin Jennings
Witney, Oxfordshire

The term "cultural leaders " is indeed grotesque. Are we talking in artistic or anthropological terms? Did any of these cultural leaders have understanding of artistic quality, or knowledge of  sculptural tradition? It seems that the answer is "No".

At least this one was cast in the UK . It wouldn't have looked very good if it had been fabricated in China, would it?


I'll grant that Ms Wearing had a challenge in portraying a woman who was alive more than a century ago.How woud you depict her except in the clothing of her own day?

So what would she do? Ms Wearing has her holding out a sheet or banner with some of Mrs Fawcett's words. I am not the first to suggest that it looks as if she is hanging out washing. I also suggest that she grips the banner in a peculiarly  awkward and slightly uncomfortable manner-just look at her hands.

Her body- language is not proclaiming something to the effect that, these are my words, look at them and take notice.It is passive and apologetic, not unlike those silent people in you see in the street who hold religious leaflets in their hands which you can accept or ignore.But perhaps that is what was wanted, a figure frozen in expressive mid-gesture might not look so dignified; she wasn't an impulsive  Pankhurst after all. Mrs Fawcett may have been a respectable Victorian matron but I think that she could have managed a more dynamic pose.

I have tried to find something redeeming about this sculpture but it doesn't offer much.It was a reasonable idea to add photos to the base but the plinth seems rather half-hearted and there doesn't seem to have been much thought about it. The sculptors of the past could have designed their own plinths to emphasise and complement their figures. The lettering on the base is of only average  quality. Surely no letter carver of quality has worked here?

MARTIN LUTHER KING AND OTHERS- GOOD AND BAD IN MODERN MONUMENTS

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

 I am  certain that  public sculpture is in a bad way in Britain. Almost without exception railway stations and public places are becoming infested with the trash which modern sculptors are producing. Whether it is a sentimental portrait of a well known middle-brow poet and architecture critic or a crass memorial to a battle from the Second World War, London in particular is being deluged with rubbish. But there are still exceptions which crop up now and again.

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

Nigel Boonham's sculpture of Martin Luther king was recently unveiled at the University of Newcastle to commemorate the visit which Dr King made in 1967 on the occasion when he was awarded an honorary degree.In its quality it is certainly an exception to the current trend.

The sculpture stands in a small, quiet courtyard and it has only a minimal plinth. The focus is on the Doctor in Dr King who stands, dignified, in academic dress, confronting you at the entrance to a building.He is leaning slightly backwards and the work is slightly larger than life size. The scale is appropriate to the small site. His thoughts are inscribed on the pavement surrounding the figure. This sculpture is the second by Boonham in Newcastle. His earlier figure of Cardinal Basil Hume stands outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral near the Central Station. Boonham is working very much in the tradition of figurative sculpture. in terms of conception and symbolism, But the modelling shows that it is of its time.The head is crisp and modern. Or should that be crisp and traditional?

It is interesting to note that Boonham was an apprentice of Oscar Nemon and learned his trade by hands on work. He is better than Nemon in many ways. He probably could not have obtained appropriate training in a British art school.

Boonham has really gone to town on the complications of academic dress, indeed he is on record as searching for someone to model the figure,gown,cap etc.He explained that he needed to work from photographs because the folds of  an academic gown change all the time even with the models slightest movement.He has made the academic dress work as a way of giving interesting form to the sculpture.It is quite convinvcing as the clothing of a human form.

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

Dr Martin Luther King, by Nigel Boonham,.University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2017.

As a portrait the modelling is bold and clear. As a likeness it often seems to show a good resemblance.  I am confident that Dalou would have recognised this to be the case. And here to set a standard, so to say, is Dalou's head of Delacroix which was made for the monument in the Luxembourg gardens. Let me remind you that makers of monuments usually do not get the chance to work from life. Not Boonham,not Dalou. But is both cases the modelling is clear and frank.

Dalou: Head of Delacroix.

I would like to compare these  works with the recent sculptures by Gillian Wearing in Birmingham and the new work which is to go in Parliament Square in London.They illustrate a somewhat different view of the idea of a public monument and how it is produced.To me it shows  the acceptance of mediocrity because; well, because nobody involved seemed to know any better.

An Ordinary Birmingham Family by G Wearing.

Ms Wearing chose the subjects to represent an ordinary Birmingham family.This seems to be the third in a series including, An ordinary Trentino Family, and an An Ordinary Danish Family.

Ms Wearing is of course a conceptual artist and the choice of two lone parents, single mothers was probably meant to be challenging. They are indeed ordinary Birmingham people with no claim to fame or national recognition.The only males are their young children.Conceptually that is fine by me. Why shouldn't ordinary folk be honoured just as much as the famous? There aren't many public sculptures in which one of the figures is pregnant.

As far as I can learn Ms Wearing, as a conceptual artist and is most unlikely to have had any training in  sculpture such as modelling the human form, visualising how to plan a figure for casting and so on. Perhaps she would not want it. Perhaps she doesn't think it necessary, because as far as I can learn the work was made in China by unnamed craftsmen-or women.

 My guess would be that photographs were sent to a firm which specialised in model making for the film world, or perhaps some organisation which is still able to produce work tableaux such as  communist propaganda used to require.Or perhaps there is some sculpture department in China carrying out this kind of work. You could of course use 3D computer apps such as filmmakers also use for 3D effects etc.This tableau, like Ms Wearing's other "Ordinaries" seems to me to have something of that kind of banality.

But as a sculpture it is seriously deficient in portrayal of form. Compared to Dalou or Boonham the Birmingham group is banality personified.The modelling of the clothes is blandly uninteresting.All garments seem to be made out of the same material. The boots and the skirt.The artist maybe a conceptualist but the visual intent is surely traditional. As photographs show it the group seems to be modelled out of lard.It is not frank and powerful-as in the Dalou head of Delacroix. It seems as if the conception is so powerful to the artist that nothing else matters.

 My thoughts on Ms Wearing's latest public sculpture-the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square can be found here.