Ask yourself – would Wollstonecraft be jumping for joy at the sight of this representation of her and her life’s work? No, she would be as horrified as the rest of us.
Why does this question matter? Because the Wollstonecraft statue is a statue commissioned and erected to commemorate an historical person and their achievements. It is meant to be celebrating, honouring and respectfully commemorating the dead. This makes it an essentially historical project because it needs to be authentic and true to the person it is representing. The Fawcett statue is an excellent example of this, sculpted by Gillian Wearing who, despite being a BritArtist, has produced a very classical, timeless statue that is not only representative but beautifully designed. Another such wonderful statue is the Manchester statue of Pankhurst by the sculptress Hazel Reeves.
For images of her Pankhurst statue and her other beautiful sculptures, see:
https://www.hazelreeves.com/portfolio?vp._filter=portfolio_category%3Apublic-art
For the unveiling and an image of the Fawcett statue in London, and my feminist discussion on the Wollstonecraft statue, see my feminist blog posts:
https://marchingasonefeministblog.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-unveiling-of-statue-of-millicent.html
https://marchingasonefeministblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-mary-wollstonecraft-statue-why-isnt.html
Commemorative statues are not artworks as such. More precisely, they are not even public art, such as Henry Moore's modernist sculpture 'Two Piece Reclining Figure Number 3' (1961) or Barbara Hepworth's 'Winged Figure' (1963). Neither are representational but they are not of or for a real person, they are simply expressive artworks. However, when it comes to a statue commissioned to honour a person who has lived, there is always less scope for artistic leeway, controversy, and attempts to generate some great big debate over its design.
A commissioned work has to fulfil certain objectives and the brief set out by those commissioning it. Out of the final two sculptors left standing, I think it's quite obvious that the sculptor Jennings fulfilled the brief and objectives set out in the statue campaign but lost out to the painter/sculptor Hambling whose statue proposal didn't fulfil it. And, in many respects, her design went against the stated purpose and aim of honouring Wollstonecraft and her writings. The runner-up, Jennings, however, had read the exam question correctly. The only problem was that the exam question was mislaid and changed at the last minute! 😟
For an excellent article on Jennings as well as photos of his sculptures (I love his 'Women of Steel'!) see:
Even so, sculptors are usually expected to revise their design if important issues are raised in order to ensure the statue is sensitive to social issues or concerns both generally and for some social groups. For instance, the 'Women's Rights Pioneers Monument' was substantially redesigned twice in response to criticisms during the approval process. The main objections were one, that the proposed scroll listing names of suffragists accidentally gave the impression that suffragists other than Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton are merely footnotes in history. Two, that if only Anthony and Stanton are depicted then there is no representation of suffragist women of colour, despite their prolific and important contributions. Both these social concerns were addressed in the two redesigns of this monument. So, I think, there is no reason why objections, criticisms and concerns raised about the Wollstonecraft statue should not be addressed by the campaign and sculptor and result in an appropriate redesign of this Wollstonecraft statue. The only difficulty is that the Wollstonecraft redesigns will need to take place after the erection of the statue rather than beforehand. But this is not our problem, it's the campaign's. They left themselves open to this by not carrying out the statue design approval stage carefully and thoroughly enough. A few local residents' meetings and a vote among this small group of people is not sufficient design approval and proposal selection for a national public commemoration statue or monument.
Whereas Meredith Bergmann's 'Women's Rights Pioneers Monument' was rigorously scrutinised and selected and eventually approved by the New York City Public Design Commission. For a quick but interesting summary of the selection process, and the historical research that Meredith Bergmann undertook to inform her statue design and details of the subsequent design amendments, see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Rights_Pioneers_Monument
There's some great photos of this monument and the 'Statue design and process' and the 'Criticism' sections are particularly informative. I'm not saying that the answer is for all commemorative statues to necessarily go through a whole lot of red tape and bureaucracy before they can be erected because this process can have other downsides and problems. However, the way in which the 'Women's Rights Pioneers Monument' was selected, approved and erected does, I think, provide a good template of factors for statue campaigners to take into consideration, such as thinking carefully about what social message they may be putting out there, intentionally or not.
Commemorative statues are not supposed to be a personal artwork reflecting a sculptor's personal take on an issue. Indeed, I feel it is not even in keeping with Hambling's other artworks and commissions, which I find rather surprising and confusing. Her two other famous commemorative monuments are those she did for Oscar Wilde and Benjamin Britten, neither of which have unfortunate connotations or implications for them as historical figures or their work and neither involve nudity or emphasise the body. Hambling did not give us Britten in the buff on the beach, erected as a statue in his honour. She could have represented him as an everyman, sitting nude inside the shell sculpture she designed for him. But he wasn’t, and neither was any other male figure either, nude or otherwise. And at least depicting a gay man as an everyman could have had an important conceptual message and made an LGBT+ positive statement.
On the contrary, she has emphasised their thoughts, ideas and work, such as sound for the composer Britten and conversation/speech for the poet and playwright, Wilde. Moreover, when Hambling commemorated the famous woman scientist, Dorothy Hodgkins with an oil painting, she also focused on Hodgkins' ideas, work and achievements. As the National Portrait Gallery writes:
"The artist presents Hodgkin immersed in her work, a structural model of insulin stands in the foreground."
For this quote, a fuller description of the painting and a picture of it, see:
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw07497/Dorothy-Hodgkin
We can see here that Hambling depicted Hodgkins herself, not a generic everywoman, and did so almost painfully realistically by even including her arthritic hands (a condition she suffered from since her 20's) as she works and writes at her desk. I think it's a great shame that we haven't had the opportunity to appreciate these design skills Hambling obviously possesses in depicting and commemorating famous women in their field when it came to the Wollstonecraft statue.
It is singularly unfortunate that it just so happens to be a female philosopher who has been inappropriately commemorated, both as a person and in terms of her thoughts and writings. As far as I am aware, Wollstonecraft is the only female philosopher to be commemorated with a monument or statue in the UK and possibly only the second world wide, after Hypatia. This is also the only Wollstonecraft statue in the world! This makes it an especially, socially important statue, not just in terms of public commemorations but also for women philosophers. Now women in the hugely male dominated field of philosophy are left without an equivalently respectful commemoration to women compared with women in other academic fields, such as STEM and literature or elsewhere, such as, feminist activism or war efforts. I think this consideration should have been at the forefront of the statue design selection and approval process. Even if Hambling were selected as the preferred artist for the job, this does not mean that they could not work with her on the commission design (as was the case with Bergmann) so that Hambling's vision and design was at least in keeping with her approach to commemorating other notable academic women and was in keeping with Wollstonecraft's personality, philosophy and works. A commemorative statue should never annihilate or overshadow the commemorated person or the purpose of the statue.
Hambling would have, hopefully, been receptive to well intended feedback. If not, she should not have taken on this type of project. And it would have been a lot easier, more time efficient and cost effective to amend the objectionable aspects of the sculpture design had the campaign made the final, intended design open to wider public opinion and feedback prior to Hambling beginning the sculpture. Now women philosophers seem to be stuck with a sexually objectifying statue that no women in any other academic field have to put up with representing their subject and research field. Steering clear of such problems should have been part of the artistic and campaign intentions, irrespective of whether they were thinking of it as an artwork or a public, commemorative commission. Just because they circumvented the numerous approval hurdles that Bergmann had to jump over, doesn't mean they couldn't take these factors into account, at least out of respect for Wollstonecraft and women philosophers, if nothing else.
As far as I can see, Hambling does not describe herself as a feminist artist/sculpture. Perhaps this means she was more likely to overlook the usual feminist art issues and so was more likely to fall into the trap than perhaps a feminist artist would. (Although, the runner-up is a man who does not do feminist art/sculpture yet he managed to avoid feminist pitfalls in his design🤷🤦.)
Nevertheless, the campaign chair, Bee Rowlatt does describe herself as a feminist. As an ex-showgirl, she is not naive about the sexualisation of women and the implications of the symbolism in this statue, including its unclothed state or the connotations of silver. Her "feminist tendencies" meant that she hated dancing in "silver high heels" and refused to dance topless. According to this article, Bee was shocked that certain dancers in that show danced topless:
"And to my horror, some of the dancers were topless. A proper dancer shouldn't have to expose her breasts.. It was a line I refused to cross".
For these quotes and the full article see:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35654337
So, if that's how she felt about it when it came to herself as a dancer, why did she think it was acceptable to allow a silver, naked statue to commemorate an 18th century woman intellectual?
Is it a case of one rule for women in real life and another in artworks? But why should women's aesthetic experience have to involve things they wouldn't want to be part of in their own lived experience?
The article continues with this description which feels uncomfortably close to what we ended up with as a statue of Wollstonecraft:
"The dancers themselves are creatures so beautiful that they catch your breath. they're like statues come to life. There's a silver-screen nostalgia about the spectacle, and the can-can, in all its unhinged glory, sent the audience wild."
As a feminist artist, I am shocked that such well-known feminist arguments, campaigns and artworks that have been overtly going on for several decades (in addition to perhaps more subtle references in the history of art) have been completely ignored in the creation of this statue. There are too many examples to list! But even if you had been living on the moon for a century, who in the artworld has not heard of the Guerrilla Girls' feminist art which boldly raised awareness of sexism and female nudity in art with slogans and quotable quotes accompanying their artworks. Perhaps their most memorable work is their 1989 poster which states "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female". During their decades long attempt to raise awareness of the objectification of women feminist conceptual art, they then reworked this poster in 2014 to broaden the scope of how stats on female nudity show the extent of sexism and misogyny in wider society: "Do women have to be naked to get into music videos? While 99% of the guys are dressed!"
For this and more on the Guerrilla Girls, see:
https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/disobedient-objects/the-guerrilla-girls-fierce-and-funny-feminists
I would add: Do women have to be shown as small and naked to get a public statue for a female, feminist philosopher, while 100% of the statues commemorating male philosophers are toweringly large, complimentary, clothed representational statues of themselves looking intelligent?
Indeed, Bergmann points out the symbolism of making the statues larger than life to convey the women's importance and impact on history. So Hambling has emphasised the unimportance of Wollstonecraft by making her invisible and the female nude so small, unimposing and far away from the viewer. Although on a pedestal we are distracted by the swirling something beneath her. She is not every woman because not every woman can achieve the impossible: have a womanly* figure and be that thin. Wollstonecraft or this 'everywoman' has also been highly sexualized by the emphasis Hambling has placed on her private area which has been rather exaggerated. What was she thinking?
Wollstonecraft has been lost in the row over the purpose of having historical figure as statues. Statues, whether artworks or commemorative, should not be a distraction from the person being honoured nor should they be designed in a way which turns that person into a laughing stock.
It’s not a question of aesthetic taste or experience. It’s not a matter of who is or isn’t prudish or so-called Victorian about nudity. But it is about true representation of the person honoured and the same ethical standards should apply to these dead, historical figures as to people who are still alive today or were alive in recent memory.
The Wollstonecraft statue campaign promised something which memorializes her principles of human rights and equality - this does not. And it stated that there are too many "allegorical" statues of women, yet this statue is just that! The campaign also claimed the statue was meant to inspire young people in the area and beyond - how does a naked woman do that? Inspire them to do what exactly?!
This Wollstonecraft statue does not do what it said on the tin. I wonder how many of us would have signed this petition if we'd known what design we would end up with. As far as I'm concerned, it's a blot on the landscape and I certainly would not have signed or supported it!
*by womanly I don't mean - as opposed to manly, since I don't make such binary, gendered distinctions. I don't subscribe to the binary theory that people are either male or female. I think these two categories are biologically, scientifically inaccurate and lead to a false dichotomy. So by womanly I simply mean not flat chested, goes in at the waist, wider at the hips, has curves, ie. the stereotypical features of the social construct of 'female'.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.