There has been lots of controversy recently about a statue of a 1970s entertainer erected outside a venue in Belfast. The statue was paid for and its erection in a public place lobbied for by an interest group – so, a case of local government listening to a groundswell of popular opinion and providing the location and authority for the thing to be erected, in perpetuity.
Controversy around the people depicted in statues tends to occur decades after the event, when attitudes to the individual or the values they represented change. In this instance, not many people (currently) seem to have a problem with the person depicted or their cultural contribution (though some online have grumbled about the geography/nationality aspect, spuriously reckoning that a Belfast-born rock musician ‘deserved’ the plinth instead).
Rather, the problem is with the quality of the depiction. I share that view. It’s rubbish. Proportions are wrong, facial resemblance is not there. (I’m not bothered about the brand of instrument depicted, which seems to appal many commentators – it’s based on a photo in which the instrument depicted is around the player’s neck. My only problem with it is that it’s proportionally wrong.)
This is, I’m afraid, fairly typical of statues to musicians in recent years – it’s as if the art of public sculpture creation has just gone, or has been left to third-raters while anyone with skill is practising their art in different fields and not touching public representational sculpture with a bargepole. Or perhaps those commissioning such statues just can’t afford those with the requisite skill? Compare any number of recent ‘old rocker’ statues (the Republic of Ireland is particularly susceptible to this fad) to public sculptures from the Victorian era let alone the Classical era and you will see that they now seem cartoon-like and ridiculous. (One exception, in my view, is the larger-than-life-size Beatles statue at Pier Head in Liverpool, by Andy Edwards, which has recognisability, gravitas and captures something of their spirit.)
Those calling for statues for other rock guitar players from Belfast are misguided. There is an argument that the person (badly) depicted in the recently unveiled monstrosity is a figure of significant cultural/historical importance in Belfast, given his prominence in numerous sold-out public performances during the 1970s, when few international artists performed in NI – he was ‘a man of the people’ with a peculiar charisma and represented something positive in dark times. Other rock-blues guitar players whose names are being bandied about by the ‘What about a statue of X?’ brigade don’t have that wider resonance – they were simply people who played an instrument in the late 20th century, made some records and had a modicum of popular success. If that were the only criteria, we may as well erect statues to Ruby Murray, Ronnie Carroll and Clodagh Rodgers… except that most of the demographic that might have cared has now departed… which will happen to the rock-blues demographic in 20 years. So there has to, surely, be consideration of the long-term justification for a lump of stone & bronze littering a footpath.
Which brings me to my main point…
I share the view expressed by the chap in the link in the comments, Gary Younge, writing at length in the Grauniad (in 2021, around the time of the toppling of the statue o the long-disgraced Edward Colston in Bristol): let’s see an end to ANY public statues to individuals. There are other ways to celebrate cultural figures (and there’s only so much room in public spaces anyway) – and after a generation, the people celebrated in most statues are generally completely forgotten. He cites the examples of the people on the three permanently occupied plinths around Nelson’s column. Can you name them? Almost no one can – they are utterly forgotten people.
As Gary concludes:
‘Let us not burden future generations with the weight of our faulty memory and the lies of our partial mythology. Let us not put up the people we ostensibly cherish so that they can be forgotten and ignored. Let us elevate them, and others – in the curriculum, through scholarships and museums. Let us subject them to the critiques they deserve, which may convert them from inert models of their former selves to the complex, and often flawed, people that they were. Let us fight to embed the values of those we admire in our politics and our culture. Let’s cover their anniversaries in the media and set them in tests. But the last thing we should do is cover their likeness in concrete and set them in stone.’
That link I mentioned: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jun/01/gary-younge-why-every-single-statue-should-come-down-rhodes-colston
But a really good statue , whether stylised or lifelike of someone “ worthy” or not, is still good art.
To me, it’s all about the quality.
Why go to such great lengths to avoid mentioning, Rory Gallagher, CH?
It’s a news story – although not much of one – here in the Republic, too…
I had originally posted a version of the post on FB and didn’t want searchable names to attract a load of moronic meat & potatoes rock-bluesers with knee-jerk reactions.
I think I agree with you Colin H: public art is often unremarkable, and figurative statues especially awkward-looking, whimsical or mediocre, but once built they prove difficult to take down. I say this about people I admire and respect: the Mary Wollstonecraft memorial in London by Maggi Hambling is a fiasco.
I quite liked that Maggi Hambling piece, but I’m obviously never going to admit that in public, because the last time I did, I got an almighty pile-on absolutely denying me any right to express an opinion that went against the collective consensus.
Is it a statue of limitations?
This one is rather good though I think.
Paul looks chubby!!!
😉
@Tiggerlion
Probably a contributory factor in his death a couple of years later
Yes, that’s the one that I exempted in the OP. The same artist created a Bob Marley statue that is representationally good too – though it’s been taken down in a road widening situation and now seems missing in action.
I thought that the statue of Brian Epstein in Liverpool was pretty good, too, when I saw it in 2023.
https://www.beatlesbible.com/2022/08/26/brian-epstein-statue-unveiled-liverpool/
So who do we replace the long-forgotten figures celebrated in these statues with?
The problem with binning statues of figures from what young people on shows like The Chase invariably refer to as “the olden times” is that the subjects they make way for are sure to be similarly transient themselves.
I’m not necessarily saying ‘take them all down’; I’m saying ‘stop building new ones’.
Heard on The Tipping Chase Point recently –
Q – Which satirical magazine always refers to Piers Morgan as Piers Moron?
A – The Sun.
I was thinking about statues and hero worship this week, largely on account of the increasingly unpleasant news story developing around Neil Gaiman.
I’ve never really been one for heroes, because heroes have a tendency to force you to choose between regret and delusion, but Gaiman is certainly someone I admired as a teenager. Maybe not on the level of Alan Moore, but still a person whose work I respected and who ticked a number of the requisite cultural boxes. And now he’s seemingly revealed as at least potentially a deeply unpleasant figure, and to be honest I don’t even feel that surprised by it.
Statues, like hero worship, are hostages to fortune, because human beings are generally more than one thing; a hero in one scene, a villain the next.
A few years ago, in a fit of Post-Imperial guilt, my kids’ Primary School decided to rename their school houses. Out went Nelson and Wordsworth, in came Rashford and Thunberg. Which is great, but what happens when these new heroes, who are still not only alive but early in their respective stories, do or say something controversial, or cross some line that makes them no longer an easy receptacle for our dreams of virtue? I guess the house names change again, now that we’ve established that we must celebrate the whole person or not celebrate at all.
All of which makes for a strong argument against statues, and that we should grow beyond the infantile notion that there are human beings who should be placed on pedestals forever.
On the other hand, statues can be quite beautiful and they do remind us of where we’re coming from. I’ve travelled a long way to look at the best of them, and there’s still a peculiar electric charge to lingering in front of the replica of Cromwell that sits outside parliament, or gazing up at Nelson, born aloft on his column, his eyes fixed by design on HMS Victory, moored in Portsmouth Harbour.
Human beings are fallible. We get it wrong all the time. We make mistakes, we cloud our own legacies and we select all the wrong people to praise and elevate. But maybe that’s part of our story, and maybe – exceptional cases excluded – we shouldn’t be too quick to airbrush it out. Maybe it shows more grace to simply learn the lesson rather than pretending the error was never made.
Personally, I would keep our statues. Unsurprisingly, I think Gary Younge misses the point with his comment about the Trafalgar Square plinths. The point of a statue isn’t that the subject will be known to everyone forever, but precisely the opposite: it’s that one day some curious kid might look up at, say, the statue of Charles James Napier, and wonder who he was, and why he was celebrated – decades after most of the populace have forgotten him. The statue is there precisely *because* the memory will fade.
And then maybe that same kid will ask themselves why all these monuments are of guys who crushed rebellions in far flung corners of the empire, and wander 100 yards up the road to find the glorious statue of Edith Cavell which sits outside the National Portrait Gallery. Edith Cavell, a nurse executed during World War 1 for insisting on treating the soldiers of both sides, and whose memorial bears the memorable inscription “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone”. Edith Cavell who I certainly wouldn’t know anything about if I hadn’t spent decades now going slightly out of my way so I could stroll past that monument on my way home from a night out. You can get a pretty full sense of the depths and heights of humanity across those 100 yards, which is why I like to walk them.
On balance, I think I take the view that it’s not the statues that need to come down, it’s our childish belief that life is comprised of heroes and villains. That the terrible things we do wipe away the great things that we achieve, and vice versa. That once we elect someone to be great we have to believe them to be perfect. That the spotlight should be a disinfectant.
But maybe there’s a way for us to keep the statues (and the billboards and the magazine covers and the records and the paintings and the books, for that matter) and simply jettison some of the presumptions that come with them. That the man (or indeed woman) on the plinth must have been a good and decent person or a role model. That the statue celebrates any more than a single aspect of their life. That we even really know them at all.
Maybe that way we can end up with cities that are beautiful and full of all the romance of our history, full of talking points about the good and bad of where we’ve come from, but without the pretence that the people celebrated in statuary must have been entirely noble, or have lead lives in full that we should seek to glorify or emulate.
Perhaps we can retain the statues in the same way I can still read the Sandman; in the uncomfortable but at least honest knowledge that sometimes flawed people do good things, and that the worst of us does not obviate the best, provided you turn a blind eye to neither.
Ugly statues, on the other hand, can get in the bin. No tolerance for them at all.
Some very good points there, Bingo. Food for thought.
Purely on the final point, I think many of course could probably find common ground there. Regarding the recent Gallagher statue in Belfast specifically, I would suggest it’s ugly in being clearly badly proportioned (leaving aside whether or not it resembles the man) and amateurish – but also, it doesn’t ‘fit’ well into the space it has been given – aesthetically or purely physically. It was not a space designed to host a statue. It just looks like a delivery has been plonked outside a theatre door.
A minor tangent to this statue debate.
There have been grumblings about Transport For London’s decision to name the various parts of what was The London Overground as six separate lines. A good idea mostly, in that you can now more easily see which Overground trains go where in the Metropolis.
Most of the grumbling (apart from by those who decry any spending of public money) has been about the names given to these lines. Most of the names are no worse than the names that the pre-existing tube lines bear. IMO. The only one that I think is a mistake is the Lioness line, purely because in 20-30 years time people will not remember why it got given that name, unless the England women’s football team defy all reasonable expectations and proceed to dominate women’s international football for decades to come. A bit of pressure there.
Sporting achievement tends to be very fleeting indeed, as are the fortunes of sporting teams. At the time we didn’t name a tube line in honour of the England men’s 1966 World Cup win and given their performance since then it’s probably just as well.
Getting further from the point of the O.P. but still relevant to my little Overground rant, why is that isolated little scrap of line from Upminster to Romford (via Emerson Park) been given a name of it’s own, the Liberty line, instead of just being absorbed into the District line as an extension?
Don’t see the problem with the Lioness Line, even if the reason is forgotten in decades to come. It’s a distinctive name – what would you prefer to call it?
Anyway, they can always stick a plaque up! Posterity assured!
Agreed. I think the impact of the Lionesses win was bigger for the sport than the 1966 World Cup win was for the mens game. It elevated the womens game to the point people were talinkg about it in the same context that they would the mens game.
I like the idea of obscure statues – that you have to do a bit of digging to find out who that person was. Not everything should be immediately obvious for all time.
I also like the idea of building in visual clues to statues – several featuring horses apparently refer to whether the rider died in battle according to how many of the horse’s legs are on the ground. I like the idea of Nelson surveying Victory in Portsmouth harbour from how he is positioned. Google Maps suggests that it is rather Worthing that attracts his eye if you scan out from Trafalgar Square, and Google search suggests it is the Admiralty and Plymouth, and even Trafalgar in Spain that merit his hawkish view – but that doesn’t bother me – the mess and confusion add to the cloud of mythmaking that slowly fuse to an agreed-upon cultural position.
Nick Drake’s burial place in Tanworth-in-Arden appears to have an unrestricted view southwards across the Cotswolds to the New Forest and the Channel, passing only through Swindon and Salisbury. That in itself for me is a geographical marker of his music and its connection to the rural landscape and culture of England.
I’m afraid that a horse’s hoof raised hasn’t indication of how the rider died, alas just an urban myth.
You say ‘just’ like it’s a bad thing. Bacronyms and post-hoc justifications are the sweet, sweet honey that stick together the stories we tell each other.
Well I declare! Here comes that equestionable statue.
What a wonderful piece of writing @Bingo_Little.
You hit a lot of nails on the head.
I love Neil Gaiman’s novels so I am sad, but not completely surprised, to read that he is a less than perfect human being. I won’t be binning his books.
Your comment about the statue of Edith Cavell is far more important. We need our statues to help us think about the past. And consider the lives of those who came before us.
It wasn’t all back and white!
I quite like statues. It’s some public art isn’t it? So that can only be a good thing. Should I like them all? Definitely not. Does that matter? Not one bit. If someone is going to pay for it and someone else is happy to allow it, then thats good.
There are probably only two real issues. The first is what to do if the statue is shit. Which is probably the least important issue. I’m always interested in how the procurement of these things happen – if it is shit – reject it don’t accept it. But a shit statue is probably better than none – it gets people talking after all.
The second issue is what if the person becomes less celebrated? There are those that are pretty obvious – that Jimmy Savile commission is unlikely to happen. Germany have managed to avoid Hitler statues without too much fuss.
If the individual becomes tainted, then I do think it makes sense to remove them from public display. Attitudes change and so can statues. Some of the most memorable scenes have involved the toppling of statues and it is a powerful piece of art in itself (channeling my inner KLF here),
To the argument that statues of individuals represent valuable history, I would argue back that a sculpture representing the history is probably going to do a better job of that.
I think statues of footballers outside football grounds work. They celebrate their football prowess and not their all-round good guy personas. The Beatles & Eleanor Rigby around the area of The Cavern also work. Also, monuments to ordinary people who did extraordinary things, such as Edith Cavell. Art installations like Bernini or, even, Gormley, are worthwhile.
Rich & powerful, no thanks. Have you seen Elon’s head?
Are the Beatles not rich people?
I think most statues are best understood as celebrating individual achievements, rather than personas, not just the footballers.
We have a statue of Tony Adams outside the Emirates. He frequently drove drunk and was by all accounts not always an easy individual to be around. He’s also someone who has turned his life around and tried to help others. It really depends on what angle you look at him from.
But the statue is simply celebrating the fact he was very good at football, in much the same way that the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square is celebrating his political achievements, but not his sexual politics or the outright racism of his early life.
Elon Musk has been the real life Tony Stark, now he’s the real life Grima Wormtongue. Maybe he has a third act where he does something genuinely useful and he’ll merit his own statue too, although I rather doubt it.
Elon Musk’s face is the face of a man who is wearing a halloween mask of Elon Musks face.
© Jonathan Pie.
The Cilla Black statue on Mathew street, though…blimey. I’m sure Cilla was lovely, but it looks more like Nicole Kidman attempting to digest a recalcitrant oyster.
When I first saw it, I did not recognise who it was meant to be.
I think it’s quite good. The Mick Jagger one next to it is superb though …
Here I am with my mate John in San Jose, Costa Rica 2017. Imagine.
Be honest, Diddley – *you* look more like Lennon than the statue. It looks like that guy from ‘Rolling Stone’ who always appears in documentaries as a talking head, or the speccy fellw in Jefferson Airplane.
There’s another Lennon-on-a-bench statue on Carnaby Street, except that one has tits for some reason.
I was reading an article about this statue of Tony Blair in Kosovo, not in the capital but in their third largest city.
Supposedly bears more of a resemblance to Jason Donovan than “Tonibler” as some children were named, though not as many as were thought to have been.
There is one of Bon Scott in Fremantle West Australia.
Got the pose right and not a bad spot by the docks. Head looks a bit big but a reasonable likeness.
I agree – the head is a touch too much.
Hell’s bells…
Here’s those Sons of Mann (however briefly) – The Bee Gees!! Striding boldly away from Douglas Promenade toward that bit of Mann which is forever M&S…
I had no idea Robin Askwith was in the Bee Gees.
I hesitate to ask this: but which one is Robin Askwith?
The one in the middle.
Pretty good
You get young Beegees, old Beegees and a random real Beegee on Beegees Way, Recliffe near Brisbane.
‘Ere! That Robin Askwith has aged a bit!
Robin Askwith now has a face that looks like it was made of cardboard and has been left out in the rain for some time.
I think part of what you’re admiring in a statue is the skill in capturing the clothes as much as the person. Modern clothes, mid- 19th century onwards say, tend towards the functional and so don’t give the artist so much to work with. I think this goes for painted portraits as well. It’s hard to make a business suit or straight forward dress interesting.
And also images have changed. Earlier statues show self-confident figures, sure of their merits and place in their world. It’s not the thing to show these attitudes now, even if the subjects have them.
I have just posted a link to a song that would be entirely appropriate for the thread in Forgotten Singles (Part 2) – namely The Redskins with Kick Over The Statues.
Thank you
Quite a lovely song here by OMD. Written about the death of Ian Curtis – which I didn’t know until just now.
Interesting. “The Missing Boy” by the Durutti Column is also about Ian Curtis, I think.
think there can be a place for both statues of individuals and more artistic representations. I used to live in Dorchester where the statues of William Barnes and Thomas Hardy were popular with both locals and tourists. Opinion was a little more divided when it came to the statue of the Queen Mother, but it serves a purpose. For those preferring something less literal there is an Elisabeth Frink memorial to the Dorset Martyrs, on Gallows Hill where the catholics were executed in the 16th century. And a ( for some reason hobbit sized) statue of a shepherd with a dog. I hated it, but it was very popular with children, who also stopped to stroke the dog.
Latterly, money has been raised to commission as statue of a woman, given there are lots of statues of men, but no non royal women. The organisers have chosen Sylvia Townsend Warner, a relatively minor literary figure with no great link to the town, but with a back story that might inspire some people in the way Bingo was by Edith Cavill. In any event, the design looks like something that will be popular with visitors, much like the new statue of Mary Anning in Lyme Regis
There’s this, in Seattle. Has a certain amount of power…
I didn’t know Jimi owed Jabba money.
Bonn, being the birthplace of Beethoven, had plenty of statues and busts to the great man. The one in the Munsterplatz is central to the city and imposes its glowering classical presence, while the bust outside the Beethoven concert hall is more creative with its waves of jagged rock only appearing aligned when seen from the front, as is fitting for someone who composed such vast, complex pieces of music.
In some ways, the most fun statue in Bonn is that of 19th century German chemist, in the university quarter, which has a reputation for being adorned with additional ‘objets’ by carnival- celebrating students. I think there’s a similar one in Glasgow that el hombre malo pointed out to me when I was there. Decorating and painting statues is a fine tradition – like the green turf mohican given temporarily to the Churchill statue in Parliament Square.
Other fun civic tributes include this bust of Konrad Adenauer, father of modern Germany, which is exceedingly unflattering, but does have the Cologne cathedral (Kölner Dom) stamped into his head behind his right ear, and who wouldn’t want that?
Len Goodman, surely? I’d give it a 7.
Unflattering likeness of Adenauer perhaps, but still a quite striking and impressive piece of art I think. I like it.
Apparently there are moves for a Gary Moore statue now.
I obliquely referred to that in the OP. It’s ridiculous. Gary was a meat and potatoes rocker with no wider social/cultural resonance or importance in NI – he was just a musician in the pop era from the region who had some success within his field. He wasn’t in any way a ‘man of the people’ who represented something bigger or brought people together.
Also, unlike, say, Van Morrison – another local – there is no body of work that deserves special recognition, no significant contribution to popular music on a bigger scale. Rory seems to inspire a lot of tribute acts and certainly bar bands in Belfast have been playing two or three of his songs forever, but I don’t hear that with Moore’s repertoire. There may have been a time when bar bands played ‘Parisienne Walkways’ but I can’t recall it – his music simply hasn’t lingered. And in my view, even that best-known and most striking composition is basically someone else’s – Roy Buchanan’s ‘The Messiah Will Come Again’.
I proofread a Moore biography a while back and kept thinking, as the author was making a valiant case for his supposed greatness, ‘There just isn’t a body of work here that will last’.
It’s an interesting point. I am sure that Gary would get a statue or museum in small town America, but I doubt would have had a statue raised by public subscription in Victorian Britain.
I don’t think anyone in, say, Shrewsbury, is lobbying for a statue of Ian Hunter or Carol Decker
Indeed. NI / Belfast is so ‘out of way’ that if anyone from the place has any level of success internationally, they tend to get seriously overrated, or their significance massively overstated, ‘at home’. Henry McCullough was the only NI person to play at Woodstock – yes, he was a great guitar improviser, with a lot of raw emotion, within the bounds that he played in (groove-based blues and country-rock), but because of that ‘NI overcompensation’ thing, I think his qualities were overstated by fans in NI in his later years. He could be brilliant, certainly, but every small town in England probably has a 60s/70s character with a storied CV and a local-hero reputation. In a way, the whole of NI is a giant ‘small town’.
Cuh. Next they’ll be putting up statues of Cactus World News @colin-h
If we’re going to keep ’em then more traffic cones on statues everywhere.
That’s what’s needed.