Hemispherical sculpture on Madingley Road

There is a sculpture on Madingley Road,
they call it who knows what.
And it's been the ruin of many an art buff,
and gods, I know, I'm one.





Oh reader, tell your friends and foe,
not to see what I have seen.
Don't spend your day on rot and misery,
to Churchill Court never go.




Well, I'm not entirely sure what redeems this metal thing in front of this block of flats on Madingley Road, at the back of Churchill College.  Do what the good people in the black car pictured above are doing:  zoom past on your way to somewhere better.



Does a close-up reveal any pattern that is pleasing to the eye or puzzling to the mind?  Or is this just a tangle of bent pipes?





There seems to be a vague idea behind it:  ooh, half a sphere; a dome with a bite taken out of it; let's break it up into squiggly bits so that it's airy and doesn't weigh down on the location.  Also, quite handy to sluice off rain, I imagine.

But why place it on itty-bitty slanty stands that sort of gesture towards a plinth (except also sort of not)?



I mean, the sky looks nice.  On a sunny day.



Another view of the object with some traffic in the background.  (And no, that coach didn't stop for a photo opportunity.)

You may have noticed by now that I find this sculpture quite mediocre.  If you, on the other hand, like it, do comment and defend this poor artefact!

Title:  Not known.  There is no plaque.  I was unable to find this out.
Artist: I don't know who the sculptor is.  Do you?  Keith Edkins has no idea who made this sculpture, either.
Date:  Tim Love of the fabulous Cambridge (UK) Open-Air Art page thinks the sculpture may be from around 2006 (?) but has no idea of its title or maker.
Featured:  Real estate agents don't even mention it.  The sculpture is clearly not seen as a feature that adds value.
Where:  Madingley Road, on the left-hand side as you leave Cambridge, across the back end from Churchill College (where ages ago McDonald's used to stand).

Lyrics borrowed from The Animals.


Other posts about pointless sculpture around Cambridge:

Ugly sculpture on Newmarket Road 

Talos:  Is this the ugliest sculpture in Cambridge?
(But note:  some people love this statue.  My son, for example, said this was his favourite sculpture in Cambridge!)

Permalink:  http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2013/08/hemispherical-sculpture-on-madingley.html

Ugly sculpture on Newmarket Road

I know it's the first day of summer and that we yearn for sun and soft breezes, and that in art it can be lovely to gaze only at beautiful things.  But not all art is rainbows and unicorns, and not all climes are blue skies.

On a miserable December day in 2012, I found this ugly sculpture:

It sits in the Cambridge Retail Park on Newmarket Road, and it's as grim as the grim grey skies of winter.

Now the Retail Park could certainly do with some public art to brighten it up, to lend interest, to allow our minds and senses to settle on something other than chain stores and parking bays.

Sadly, this isn't the sculpture to do that job.

To my eyes, it has no distinct silhouette or shape.   A spire?

On top of a sort of blob?



And why is the spire striped?  There is an attempt here to create textural interest, to contrast smooth and striated -- but the contrast is so harsh, and the horizontal lines going half-way up the spire seem so half-hearted.




I love rust.  Rust can be magnificent:  it is on the Chapman brothers' dinosaurs;  it is on Richard Serra's sculptures.

Here, though, it is not.  Magnificent, that is.





And what are these diagonal lines, incised into marble?  (Or is it granite?)  Why the contrast in materials?

And is this a giant sundial?

Or an elaborate outdoor bench?

I attempted to impart some atmosphere into this object by instagramming it with a sepia filter:



To no avail.  The pointy blob is as miserable as ever.

I suppose its one redeeming feature is the fact that it does fit in very successfully with its environment.  It is, alas, as depressing as its surroundings.

Who sculpted it?  I haven't been able to discover the artist's name nor the work's title.  If you know, leave a comment or email me!!

And if you happen to love this thing:  please do defend it!

Other posts:

Another Cambridge artfail:  Snowy Farr statue

Successful public art:  Murals under the Newmarket Rd roundabout

Have a lovely longest day of the year!

Permalink:  http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2013/06/ugly-sculpture-on-newmarket-road.html

Talos: Is this the ugliest statue in Cambridge?

Look.  It's an ugly statue in the middle of Cambridge.

Well, I think it's ugly.  You may disagree.  My suspicion, though, is that most of you agree.  Judging by the lack of love accorded this statue.

Nobody stands and looks at it.  Nobody has their photograph taken with it.  Tourists, children and punt touts cluster around the Snowy Farr statue less than 20 yards around the corner but nobody loves Talos.

For this is the statue's title:  Talos.

Who, may you ask, or what, is Talos?

If you are an afficionado of the role-playing videogame The Elder Scrolls / Skyrim, you will have your own ideas about Talos. For the rest of us, it's a trip back to ancient Greek mythology.

Talos in Greek mythology

Zeus abducted Europa and took her to the island of Crete.  On Crete, a bronze giant guarded Europa from pirates by circling the island's shores three times a day.  This bronze robot man was called Talos.  He was made by either Zeus or Dadaelus (the engineer) or Hephaistos (the god of fire and iron).  A single vein of molten metal gave Talos life; this 'blood' was kept inside the giant's body by a bronze peg in his ankle.

When Jason and the Argonauts landed on Crete, Talos attacked them.  Jason's companion, the sorceress Medea, charmed the clueless Talos into taking out the bronze peg, and all his ichor flowed into the sand.  Talos 'died'.

Some of us will remember Talos from the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts, magnificently animated by stop-motion guru Ray Harryhausen.

Source:  Charlie Bell at Collidge of Nollidge on Jason and the Argonauts and Ray Harryhausen (1963). 

Click on the clip above.  Or watch it at youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q17dl_aUNf4

But Harryhausen's Talos is a far cry from the maimed and armless Cambridge Talos.

Post-war angst

The Cambridge sculpture is made of bronze (just like the mythical Talos).  It has no arms.  It has no face, just a featureless angular blob.  Its torso bulges out in a box-like shape.

Look closely.  The surface texture is rough and unfinished.  Items that look like small pebbles or fossils are embedded in the bronze. It is not so much a metal machine as a stunted man.  Because why would a robot need a penis?

The man is hollowed out -- literally.  Look at the cavity of his back.

Talos was sculpted in 1950.  The anonymous authors of the (really good) Cambridge Sculpture Trails inform us:

"By depicting him [Talos] without arms, Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) portrays the anger and bewilderment felt by many of the post-war generation British sculptors."

I don't usually like to take others' interpretations on wholesale but there is something to this view.  Look at some other post-World War Two bronze sculptures:

Germaine Richier, Praying Mantis, 1949.  Source:  © Christie's

Richier's figure is emaciated and barely human:  an insect-woman hybrid, without face or will.

Ossip Zadkine, The Destroyed City, 1951-3, Rotterdam, memorial to the 1940 bombing of Rotterdam by Germany.  Source:  Japanese wikipedia.

Zadkine's hollowed-out man throws his arms in the air but is helpless in the face of destruction.  All the post-war statues are like these:  not heroic but humans reduced to their existential essentials.

Lynn Chadwick, Teddy Boy and Girl, 1955.  Source:  zvab.com.

Even Chadwick's Teddy Boy and Girl are strangely stunted creatures.  You'd think that 1950s rockin' youth would be more cheerful but no.  They, too, must do without faces, balanced on spindly legs, oddly misshapen and bereft of muscles.

What does it all mean?

The sculptor of Talos is Michael Ayrton.  He was interested in Greek mythology.  Here's another Greek subject, sculpted by Ayrton:

Michael Ayrton, Minotaur, 1968-9, Barbican, London.  Source:  © Metro Centric via a Wikimedia Creative Commons Licence.

The sculptor himself wrote about Talos:

"A certain tranquillity lies in his stupid presence, a certain comfort.  He has no brains and no arms, but looks very powerful."

(from Jacob E. Nyenhuis, Myth and the Creative Process: Michael Ayrton and the Myth of Dadealus, the Maze Maker (2003), p.102.

Maybe Europa found comfort in her bronze guardian.  But do we find comfort in Ayrton's faceless man?

The classics scholar Jacob E. Nyenhuis (who wrote the abovecited book about Ayrton) compared Talos to contemporary military leaders, from Iran to China.  Nyenhuis says that when a dictatorial army crushes the people, 

"that victory is as hollow as Ayrton's sentinel figures  and the country's leadership as mindless as the maddened, bronzed Talos." (pp.103-4)

How ugly is Talos?

To me, Talos is very ugly.  But my detective work into the work's context and background now makes me think:  perhaps its ugliness is the statue's very point?  Perhaps, in a world only five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and after the discoveries of World War genocide, humans did really seem maimed and unheroic?  The future bleak, the face blinded and mute, the stocky torso and muscular calves just a sham?

Today, I walked past the statue and some pranksters had put a lampshade on Talos's head:

Was Talos's head just too ugly and bleak to be coped with? Is the lampshade an improvement?  Or do we prefer Talos's inhuman mask?   

Ten minutes later I walked past again, and diligent city cleaners had removed the ruffled head.  Back to the everyday, then.

What:  Talos, 1950, bronze sculpture, by Michael Ayrton.
Where:  Guildhall Street, in front of St George's House, opposite the Guildhall, between Yo Sushi' and The Red Cow.
When:  Erected on the completion of Lion Yard and Fisher House in 1973.

Read more:
Cambridge Sculpture Trails.
The entry on Talos at Explore Crete.

Related posts:

The peculiar history of the Cambridge war memorial

Seven reasons why the Snowy Farr sculpture fails

Permalink: http://artincambridge.blogspot.com/2013/02/talos-is-this-ugliest-statue-in.html

Seven reasons why the Snowy-Farr public sculpture fails

Half-baked artfail

Public sculpture does not have to be solemn.  Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen plopped a giant ice cream cone onto a shopping mall:

Neumarkt, Cologne.  From here.

 Jeff Koons grew a monumental puppy out of flowers and leaves:

Outside the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (Spain)
Noebse (Wikimedia), reproduced via 'Freedom of Panorama' 

Nor do monuments have to be figurative.  They can be abstract, like Constantin Brancusi's Endless Column.

This artwork may be protected by copyright. It is posted on the site in accordance with fair use principles.

Now Cambridge has its own crazy-kooky public sculpture:

Geofones (own work), Geofones/ CC-BY-SA-3.0

This was unveiled on 7 August.  It commemorates Walter 'Snowy' Farr.  He died in 2007 and was an eccentric man who used to busk in the city centre and raise money for guide dogs for the blind.

Yes, it's nice to have sculptures in the centre of town.  Cambridge is woefully under-statued.  So why is this an ARTFAIL?

Seven reasons why this fails!

1.  Abstract or figurative?  Decide!

2.  Postmodern ironic play with history or modernist disregard for place, context and architecture?  Or just willful disregard for whatever is part of the surroundings?

3.  Playground feature, surrealist portrait, or a 3-D ad for Haribo allsorts??

4  Can we interact with it?  Yes, we can, if we're a punt tout.

5.  Primary colours, black-and-white, metallic bronze, or red/orange?  Decide!

6.  A gravity-defying conglomerate of blobs?  An experiment in space versus solids?  A play of abstract shapes versus realistic mice?  Up on a pedestal or down at street level?  Decide!

7.  Internationally-renowned or locally relevant? Cambridge's mayor over-hyped this when she claimed it was a "world class piece of art" by "an internationally-renowned artist".  

World class?  Internationally-renowned?  You mean like Anish Kapoor or Rachel Whiteread (or even Damien Hirst)?  Um, no.  It's not.  It doesn't need to be.  But why justify it as if it were?  Either it's good or it's not.  Being 'internationally-renowned' doesn't automatically make it fabulous.

Some people like this kind of sculpture, some people hate it, but I prefer Snowy Farr's dignified gravestone,  carved by letter carver Pippa Westoby.

How about you?  Do you find it interesting?

What and where

Snowy Farr, by Gary Webb, unveiled 7 August 2012, aluminium and bronze, outside the Guildhall, corner of Market Hill and Petty Cury, central Cambridge, England

Read more:
Read my follow-up post:  Snowy-Farr statue vandalised!