Section:GDN 1J PaGe:4 Edition Date:190803 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 2/8/2019 17:32 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
- The Guardian Sat urday 3 Aug ust 2019
4 Opinion
W
hat I’d give to know what was
said at the commissioning
meeting that led to the new
sculpture at the Dreamland
theme park in Margate. The
piece is planned as a tribute to
the town’s autumn hosting of
the Turner prize exhibition.
Did a young creative, during a working breakfast,
muse: “So the prize is named after Turner, the artist
who did the landscapes. But that’s just boring, right?
So how about we go with a diff erent Turner instead?
Kathleen? Lana? Anthea? Or how about a massive
infl atable Tina Turner?” Too expensive? “If the budget
won’t stretch to a whole body, let’s just go with her
head. If we can raise a bit of extra cash, maybe we can
throw in a hand, too.”
Looking at the early images of the piece, which is
7m (23ft) high and will house a karaoke machine so
that visitors can climb inside and sing along to Turner
classics, I can’t decide whether it’s monstrous, brilliant
or plain terrifying. It may be all of these things at once.
Certainly, it encapsulates all that is bold and bonkers
about 21st-century public art. And perhaps we should
applaud Dreamland for trying to inject some fun into
what is so often a solemn and serious endeavour.
Far too often large-scale public works drip with
sanctimony as they invite passers by to, y’know,
really think about the world. A case in point is
Damien Hirst’s 20m Verity in Ilfracombe, Devon ,
depicting as it does a semi-fl ayed pregnant woman
standing on a pile of books while waving a sword
and carrying the scales of justice. If art is meant
to provoke, then this undoubtedly succeeds. It
makes children cry, dogs whimper and residents
Fiona Sturges
is an arts writerquite possibly daydream about pickling its creator
in formaldehyde.
Others, such as Sean Henry’s Couple , achieve
the precise opposite of what was intended. Henry’s
sculpture is a steel platform off the coast of Newbiggin-
by-the-Sea, Northumberland, on which two giant fi gures
look out to sea. It is, one presumes, meant to draw
attention to the watery sunset, which is a nice idea were
it not for the fact you can no longer see it owing to the
unprepossessing artwork obscuring the view.
The Dreamland piece also has the advantage of being
temporary: like a fairground bouncy castle, it can be
defl ated at a moment’s notice. Would that we could have
stuck a pin in Anish Kapoor’s Orbit , a ghastly tangle of
steel tubing commissioned for the 2012 Olympics, which
was later turned into a slide to give it a practical function;
or Maggi Hambling’s tribute to Oscar Wilde , essentially
a crayon drawing rising from a coffi n, that the late, great
art critic Tom Lubbock, called “a plain disaster ... An
empty space would be better ”.
One of the inherent problems of art in a public
space lies in its remit of trying to please everyone.
Outdoor art needs to satisfy councils, funding bodies
and local businesses, which is why it often ends
up being boringly mediocre or wildly ill-judged.
There is also a diff erence between what is deemed
acceptable in a gallery and out side it. While no one is
threatening to deposit Marc Quinn’s blood installations
or Piero Manzoni’s tinned poo on town-centre
roundabouts, rules nonetheless apply.
Lubbock wrote that public art “stands for us. It’s a
form of collective speech and collective action .” Clearly,
pitching it right is a challenge. As well as speaking of
the culture and society in which we live, it needs to
have an air of mystery without being obscure, and
aesthetically pleasing without being twee. Ideally, it
shouldn’t put people off their lunch. Ant ony Gormley
pulled off all these things with Angel of the North , and
his iron fi gures on Crosby beach in Merseyside. Perhaps
the most successful public artwork of recent years is the
fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, which has variously
hosted a sculpture of a pregnant woman with no arms ,
a royal blue cockerel , a replica of HMS Victory and a
hand with a comically elongated thumb. It works largely
because no work is permanent, which makes it open to
experimentation or silliness.
Given the number of pieces that have been quietly
removed over the years, among them Quebec’s notorious
“toilet” sculpture (a gift from Jacques Chirac) and
Egypt’s grim replica of an ancient Nefertiti bust , we
shouldn’t fret too much about the carbuncles planted in
our towns and countryside. The public and critics can be
relied upon to stamp their feet when faced with a blot on
the landscape.
History has shown us that, when everything goes
right, public art can be beautiful, beloved and teach us
much about past lives and cultures. Margate’s blow-up
Tina is by no means the next Burghers of Calais , but what
it lacks in elegance it makes up for in enthusiasm. And
what is public art if not a mad exercise in optimism?L
ingerie brand Victoria’s Secret seems
to be having an identity crisis. For the
fi rst time since its launch in 1995, its
runway show has been cancelled, with
model Shanina Shaik telling reporters
that the company is trying to work
on its branding. This comes in the
wake of falling sales and controversy
surrounding the show’s lack of diversity.
Furthermore, the show’s whole shtick – a parade of
almost naked models , each a perfect mix of skinny-
curvy, decked in angel wings , being ogled by men- looks dated after #MeToo. Donald Trump used to
be a frequent guest at the shows; Les Wexner , CEO
of Victoria’s Secret’s parent brand, L Brands, owned
Jeff rey Epstein’s New York mansion and was one of his
former fi nancial clients.
Of late, women’s magazines have jettisoned stories
about the extreme nil-by-mouth dieting and exercise
measures undertaken by the models in the run-up to
the show, in favour of articles about body positivity.
Lingerie brands aimed at young women, such as Aerie ,
ThirdLove and Lively, promote body diversity and
oppose airbrushing. They seem miles away from the
pornifi ed aesthetic that girls – and I mean girls – were
encouraged to adopt a couple of decades ago, in no
small part due to Victoria’s Secret. This was lingerie
touted as empowering, but it didn’t feel that way.
Victoria’s Secret was originally launched to appeal
to men, to provide a place where they could buy saucy
underwear for their wives and girlfriends without
feeling uncomfortable. It was based on the idea of a
Victorian boudoir – hence the name – and the original
shops were kitted out that way, all drapery and
chandeliers. Perhaps this is why the chain found itself
in trouble and was scooped up in 1982 by Wexler , who
supposedly made it more female-focused.
Supposedly? Because, for me, being good at fl ogging
products to women and acting in their interests is
not the same thing; “female focused” doesn’t mean
“female friendly”. When I co-wrote a feminist book,
The Vagenda, there was a whole chapter on the way
lingerie is marketed. But whether you’re critiquing
lingerie or fad diets or magazines, the counter-
argument was always the same : “but women are buying
it” – a view that failed to take into account socialisation
(as though we emerge from the womb primed to be
buyers of crotchless thongs), consumer choice, media
imagery and female objectifi cation.
Women may have been buying Victoria’s
Secret lingerie in their millions. Some women did
undoubtedly feel empowered by it (just as others will
feel empowered by simple cotton pants from M&S).
Nevertheless, we all knew that Victoria’s Secret was
about pleasing men. The trick it so successfully pulled
off was convincing many of us that pleasing men meant
also always pleasing ourselves, but now women are
voting with their feet. And I don’t blame them.
Fiona
Sturges
Will public art
recover from
Tina Turner’s
giant head?
Victoria’s Secret
is out: a tired
brand well past
its sell-by date
Rhiannon
Lucy Cosslett
Dreamland’s
infl atable Tina
Turner head
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