Art

Every major European city has its public art treasures. Brussels has the ‘Manneken-Pis’, Copenhagen ‘The Little Mermaid’ and Rome has the Bernini fountains. But where else but London could you find works by Rodin, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Antony Gormley and Sir Anthony Caro alongside a tree made out of traffic lights, a giant black cat and the bones of a dead philosopher dressed up and put on public display? It may not all be conventionally great art, but it’s the mix of the wonderful and weird that London does best.

The Public Monuments and Sculpture Association online database lists over 2,000 entries for works situated in central and east London alone. Covering everything from commemorative statues, art sculpture, architectural sculpture and decorative clocks, towers and fountains, it’s evidence that everywhere you look, London is one big sculptural art gallery. Feature continues

Public sculptures are commissioned for a number of reasons: to mark an event (as the Monument does the Great Fire of London); to celebrate a public figure (such as the statue of suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in Victoria Tower Gardens); or to create a visual identity for a new area (witness the extensive public art programme undertaken by the London Docklands Development Corporation in the late 1980s and 1990s).

Sculptural artworks in public places not only have to relate to the landscape and architecture around them, but also to the people who will encounter them. It’s easy to get it wrong. Turner Prize nominee Vong Phaophanit’s huge illuminated glass wall lined with ash and silk may have been beautiful, but installed in a public park in Greenwich in 1993 it couldn’t survive the local youth lobbing stones at it and was dismantled three years later. More sturdy works have fared little better. Built after the rejection of a design by acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor, the Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain, designed by Kathryn Gustafson, has been beset by problems since it opened in July 2004. Blocked pumps, slippery algae and hairline cracks all contributed to a £2 million cost overrun and an ongoing annual maintenance bill of £250,000.

Security is another issue. The December 2005 theft of Henry Moore’s large-scale bronze reclining figure (worth £3 million) from Perry Green in Hertfordshire, and the removal of part of Lynn Chadwick’s £600,000 bronze, ‘The Watchers’ from the grounds of south-west London’s Roehampton University in January this year demonstrates that size and weight are no deterrent to sculpture thieves. Despite a reward of up to £100,000 for the recovery of the Moore, neither has been found. There are other potential dangers, too. In 1994 Eros was damaged when an inebriated reveller clambered up for a close encounter. Ivor Robert Jones’s statue of Churchill was given a well-documented makeover when a green turf mohican was added during the anti-capitalist May Day demonstrations of 2000. Major statues are now boarded up when large crowds are expected. Other artworks have not been so well protected. Rachael Whiteread’s cast of an East End terrace may have helped win her the Turner Prize, but it couldn’t win over Tower Hamlets’ councillors, who demolished it months later.

But the success of projects like the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square show that when executed thoughtfully, public sculpture can still stimulate and, even if disliked, provoke valid debate. Although only life-size, Mark Wallinger’s humble marble Christ figure ‘Ecce Homo’ dominated its surroundings during its tenure on the plinth in 1999. Likewise, the current occupant, Marc Quinn’s sculpture of the disabled artist Alison Lapper, seen eight months pregnant, has continued to challenge how we judge what a public sculpture is and should be.
To find out more about the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association see www.pmsa.org.uk

Exhibit 1 Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
Opened in 1854, the Crystal Palace Dinosaur Court was the first attempt to recreate life-size models of the giant lizard-like creatures whose bones had recently been discovered. Made by sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, in consultation with early palaeontologist Richard Owen, the painted concrete and stone animals proved a popular attraction alongside the Crystal Palace that had been relocated to the same Sydenham park after the 1851 Great Exhibition. Scientists’ understanding of dinosaurs fell short of modern standards and so the models may be somewhat lacking in anatomical correctness (thumb bones were mistaken for nose horns, for example), but the big beasts are in better shape than ever. While the Crystal Palace was long-since lost in a fire, after an extensive refurbishment in 2003 the dinosaurs are now Grade II listed, and a real treat to behold. Crystal Palace Park, Thicket Rd, SE20. Crystal Palace rail.

Eros

Exhibit 2 Eros
Erected in Piccadilly Circus in 1893, Alfred Gilbert’s winged Eros is one of London’s most universally famous public sculptures and one of the first to be cast in aluminium; except of course that it isn’t Eros, the Greek god of sexual love at all. Part of the memorial fountain to the Victorian philanthropist, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the figure was more appropriately modelled on Eros’s brother Anteros, the god of selfless love, and titled the ‘Angel of Christian Charity’. Wanting to avoid the traditional ‘coat and trousers’ style of commemorative statuary, Gilbert’s choice of a mythological male figure, and a naked one at that, was not deemed fitting by many, particularly when mistakenly named. The sculpture may be well-loved now, but the project gave Gilbert no end of grief.

Piccadilly Circus, W1. Piccadilly Circus tube.

Peter Pan

Exhibit 3 Peter Pan
An Edwardian equivalent to Harry Potter, the character of Peter Pan and his adventures in Neverland are as popular today as when JM Barrie wrote the original children’s novel in 1911; spawning numerous film adaptations and even a syndrome for others who, like Peter, refuse to grow up. George Frampton’s large bronze of the pipe-playing prepubescent, commissioned by Barrie himself, appeared in Kensington Gardens in 1912 and has proved just as popular. Located by The Long Water where Pan first lands in the novel, it depicts him, pipes in hand, perched on a tree stump around the base of which frolic wildlife, including rabbits, squirrels, mice and, d of course, fairies. Twee it may be, but it suits not only its fictional subject, but the manicured parkland setting.
Kensington Gardens, west side of The Long Water, W2. Lancaster Gate tube.

Broadgate Venus
Located in Exchange Square in Broadgate, this enormous, loincloth-clad, reclining bronze lady by Colombian artist Fernando Botero, designed in 1989, weighs in at five tonnes and gives the term voluptuous a whole new meaning.
Exchange Square, EC2. Liverpool St tube/rail.