The bronze statue in Cambridge, England is 13 feet tall. The figure is wearing academic robes and a mortarboard. He doesn’t exactly have a face, as his head appears to be wrapped in twisted cloth.
Who does the statue titled “Don” supposedly represent? This is, um, Prince Philip. Indeed, the plaque beneath the sculpture reads: “HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, 1977-2011.”
However, for a lot of who saw them, the artwork didn’t bring to mind Filip, who died in 2021. The statue also didn’t receive the international recognition enjoyed by Michelangelo’s David or China’s Terracotta Army. To put it mildly.
In 2014, when the statue was erected, Nadine Black, public art manager at Cambridge City Council, called the work “probably the worst quality work ever submitted to the council”.
Earlier this month, the council told Unex Group, which owns Charter House, the Cambridge city center office constructing where the statue stands, that it have to be removed by August.
This is partly due to a lack of artistic value: the regulation mentions the “harmful material impact of the statue”. But this is also since the monument was erected though no constructing permit was initially obtained.
This is a denial from 2014 stated that the standard of the statue “should be considered questionable at best.”
said Katie Thornburrow, a Cambridge city councilor on her website“I will be glad it is gone, but I will be angry that developers can just dump it on the site and then force the council to spend officers’ time and money to take it away.”
Unex Group didn’t respond to a request for comment. Its chairman, Bill Gredley, said The Times of London.: “There were people who didn’t like it and I understand that, there are also people who liked it and I understand that too. The piece is controversial.”
He said the statue can be moved somewhere “where it will be appreciated.”
So who is Donatello or Brancusi liable for this atrocity? Oddly enough, this query is hard to answer.
The Unex group created the work of Uruguayan sculptor Pablo Atchugarry. Mr. Gredley he told VarsityCambridge University’s student newspaper, in 2014, reported that Mr. Atchugarry “designed a model in marble, then had us enlarge it and cast it” in bronze.
However, Mr Atchugarry vehemently denied being the creator of the work. According to Varsity, he said Cambridge News he was then “truly amazed, concerned and disappointed” by what he believed was a misrepresentation of the loan. He added that he had never even seen the finished work.
Can we safely call Don the worst contemporary sculpture? There are formidable challengers.
A bust of soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, unveiled in 2017 at Madeira Airport in Portugal and named after him, has been widely criticized for looking less just like the handsome soccer player and more like Sloth from “The Goonies.” It was removed after just over a 12 months.
A 2009 statue of Lucille Ball in her hometown of Celoron, New York was nicknamed Scary Lucy because of her distorted facial expression that caused nightmares fairly than laughter. It was replaced by a statue with a more conventional Lucy-like face. The creator of the unique work was so shocked by the confusion that he gave up sculpting.
However, the passage of time often changes the fame of art. Rodin delved into every thing Balzac before sculpting this creator. “Ultimately, Rodin was more interested in capturing Balzac’s creative power and vitality than in faithfully recording the author’s physical likeness” – by Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
But the largely literalist art lovers of the time could deal with nothing except that the sculpture didn’t exactly resemble Balzac. A plaster version of the monument, unveiled in 1898, was met with scorn.
Due to ridicule, Rodin withdrew the work, and it was only solid in bronze in 1939, 22 years after his death.
It now stands on Boulevard Raspail in Paris, near the intersection with Boulevard Montparnasse, town’s beloved landmark.
It may not occur in our lifetime. But perhaps there is still time for Don and Ronaldo to be given similar places of honor. Maybe.
