In these days of scrolling and outrage, have we lost our ability to discuss art? Sam Byers
over 4 years in The guardian
The outcry over the statue to Mary Wollstonecraft should not be dismissed as mere noise by either lovers of art or its creators
Three weeks ago – ancient history in the opinion cycle – Maggi Hambling’s sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled on Newington Green in north London. I say “unveiled”, but it was really more a question of the sculpture being set loose.
First it was photographed in truncated, misleading closeup, then it was exposed, via news sites and social media, to the glare of fevered and largely hostile public opinion. Even with clarification that the naked figure atop a gout of primordial matter was not, in fact, Wollstonecraft herself, but an “everywoman”, few found this attempt to redress the entrenched misogyny of public art and memorial successful. Why did this everywoman need to be naked? And even if she had to be naked, why did she need to be so toned? Was this how we wanted to memorialise a foundational feminist thinker, with yet another idealised and inexplicably denuded female body? Continue reading...
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