Art is meant to be controversial.
Artists crave for their work to be talked about, to promote and provoke discourse, praise and criticism. Yes, even criticism. The worse thing that can ever happen to an artist is for a piece of work to be completely ignored and disregarded. For them even a negative reaction is better than none at all for, as Oscar Wilde famously said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”.
Artists are no different to writers. They’d rather their work was talked about, even if that talk is not always complimentary in nature.
Maggi Hambling is a painter and sculptor who, appropriately, created a sculpture titled A Conversation With Oscar Wilde in 1998. It didn’t go down particularly well with the art cognoscenti upon its unveiling, with one critic (and, as a writer, I am fond of the theory that ‘all critics are just bitter, failed artists’) likening it to a Madam Tussauds waxwork.
Scallop, her fifteen feet high tribute to Benjamin Britten that stands on the beach at Aldeburgh was also subjected to criticism when it was unveiled in 2003 with some local residents going as far as raising petitions demanding for the sculptures immediate removal from the beach.
SCALLOP @ Aldeburgh Beach (Christopher Hilton/Geograph)
Scallop has also been vandalised on numerous occasions including one attack in 2012 which saw the words “It’s an old tin can” painted onto it.
Imagine someone scrawling ‘They’re just a load of weeds’ over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Would the high respect in which it is regarded make the vandalism worse?
Is vandalism, as far as works of art are concerned, a purely subjective concept?
Whatever you might think of it-and Scallop has as many supporters as it does detractors-the piece is most certainly eye catchingly impressive. The fact that it stands in such splendid isolation on a beach means, of course, that it is as open to unwanted attention as it is to the elements but surely the fact that it has garnished such a reaction is justification for its existence and evidence of a job well done by its creator?
Great art is accessible. You should be able to touch it, sit on it, climb all over it and pose for a selfie as you lean against it.
Try that with Michelangelo’s David and see where it gets you. On second thoughts, please don’t. I don’t want anyone spending a few night in a Florence prigione on my account.
And look, don’t feel compelled to have a pop at Scallop either. Hate it if you like but, rather than feel compelled to damage it, ask yourself why it provokes such a strong reaction in you and, with that being the case, congratulate its creator for ticking one of your boxes rather than leaving it blank and unanswered.
Hambling wanted Scallop to share that wild and oft-untamed eastern coast of England that had so inspired Britten, a composer who draws similar levels of both light and shadow from assorted admirers and critics of his work. The sculpture is pierced with a quote from Britten’s opera Peter Grimes, “I hear those voices that will not be drowned.”
Scallop, like those voices will forever be inundated by both the sea and the harshest of words and actions of those who judge it.
But it will never drown.