Civic Monument or Public Art?
All statues are sculpted, but not all sculptures are statues.
A bronze bust titled ‘The Head of Oscar Wilde’ was installed recently on Dovehouse Green—a small London park not far from where Wilde lived in Tite Street, Chelsea,
It is a posthumous work by the Scottish sculptor and graphic artist, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924—2005), made possible by a charitable foundation to mark the centenary of his birth, and its unveiling was also timed appropriately to occur on Oscar Wilde’s birthday.
The physical configuration of the piece renders our man of letters as a fallen and fractured figure. Metaphor this may be—but, absent a meaningful reading, its composition is inclined to suggest itself, ironically, as a symbol of divided opinion.
Continue reading “Divided Opinion”