Visual art works in public spaces can usually count on unvarnished comments in Rotterdam. These periods of habituation never last long, though. And after ten years or so, if you tried to remove the sculpture/mural/structure, you would get into trouble with the locals. Speaking examples of these grown loves are ‘Erasmus’ (the Laurenskerk initially opposed the ‘idol’ of this humanist, ‘The Destroyed City’ by Ossip Zadkine (the common man thought it far too modern) and ‘The Embodied Unity’ by Wessel Couzijn, in front of the Unilever building (it was called ‘the rust bucket’ by the people who worked there).
Santa Claus
The reception to Paul McCarthy’s ‘Santa Claus’, fell into the ‘lukewarm’ category. However, when the supposed Christmas tree Santa held in his hand turned out to be an erotic toy the enthusiasm of local residents suffered a serious dip. The sculpture was temporarily parked in the courtyard of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Meanwhile, Santa Buttplug has a permanent home on Binnenweg Square. Santa has become such a natural part of the neighbourhood that shops in the area use the sculpture as their logo. Now that the buttplug has become a part of the Christmas decorations at the Oude Binnenweg, the circle has been completed.
Just as you shouldn’t hear football players explain their own performance, especially if they do so in the second person singular for unfathomable reasons, you shouldn’t ask an artist what he or she means in order to better understand a work of art. If he had been able to put this in words he would have written a pamphlet. Yet we ask artists more and more often to explain their work. Apparently, we no longer have the patience to get used to a work of art and allow it to acclimatise to its surroundings.
For some days now, the sculpture ‘Moments Contained’ by British artist Thomas J. Price has been exhibited in the station square. On Thursday 1 June, I stand completely neutral in front of this new acquisition. A cocky stylised head looks at me defiantly over a trellis placed around the sculpture. Call it love at first sight.
Two days later, the four-metre-high artwork now unveiled, I see two children looking fascinated at the sculpted young woman. They gently touch her, look around to see if that is allowed and raise their gaze in awe. The woman stands there, looking self-assured. A stone’s throw away, a guard watches. The fact that the woman is standing alone on this large square gives her something vulnerable at the same time. You rarely see women like her alone. They prefer to walk in groups. The most surprising detail is that this sculpture is on equal height, or rather on equal footing with us. It does not stand on a pedestal, which sets it apart from a classical statue.
My elation is cruelly disrupted by the cynical column Rosanne Hertzberger writes in the Dutch paper NRC. In the Netherlands, a positive event must apparently immediately be spoiled by a comment that shows suspicion about the good intentions behind it, preferably while the euphoria is still going on. My first thought after reading it is: yet another example of a scientist who has no antenna for artistry and will want to tip the balance between beauty and purpose towards the latter at all times. When columnists of a quality newspaper so blatantly commit their cultural ineptitude to the paper, from now on art barbarians will feel free to express their gut views as well. Hertzberger compares the black young woman to a white naval hero of yore hoisted on a pedestal and she observes that nowadays you don’t have to be able to achieve anything to become a hero and being rewarded with a statue. Does she not know the difference between a statue and a sculpture, I wonder. What does the Droom en Daad (Dream & Deed) foundation, who gave the city this art work, say about this statue?
The website includes an interview with the artist. Although the questioner constantly tries to elicit politically sensitive statements from him, Price remains as stoic as his creation. In 2021, his sculpture ‘The Distance Within’ was placed in Harlem, New York. ‘The community created its own story about it,’ says the artist. ‘The Harlem citizens are able to explain the meaning of my work much better than I can.’
A year ago, the ‘Warm Shores’ sculpture group was unveiled in Price’s hometown of London. ‘People, cried with happiness,’ he says, ‘they should give the work its meaning. I don’t want to dictate anything.’
That message did not reach art critic Wilma Sütö. With the approval of Droom & Daad publishing her essay, she dictates how the public in Rotterdam should look at Price’s work. She uses the word ‘statue’ and compares it to the historic statues of Dutch heroes. Sütö calls Price’s “statue a critically valuable revision of history. This statue binds together a painful dynamic of racial consciousness and overt discrimination.”
Thank God, I had not read this toe-curling prose before I stumbled upon the woman who planted her Nikes so sturdily on Rotterdam Central Station’s Square.
