Man Beheaded by Society: Why is the new statue of Oscar Wilde causing controversy?
By Mia Townsend, Third Year English
Outrage has been expressed towards the new two-metre-high sculpture of Oscar Wilde. The bronze statue, designed by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, showcases the playwright’s segmented head, echoing a resemblance towards Wilde’s painful death.
Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet, playwright and novelist, creating some of the most significant pieces of nineteenth century literature like The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
Wilde challenged societal formalities and embraced the principles of aestheticism, broadly recognised as ‘art for art’s sake’. In fact, some of Wilde’s famous witticisms are still used today: ‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken’, ‘To live is the rarest thing in the world, Most people exist, that is all’ and ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’. He is a profound figure within Victorian literature and is studied across many schools throughout the UK and and enjoyed by many globally.
However, none of these literary masterpieces are portrayed through this sculpture, but rather his ‘fall’ from society has been showcased instead.
Despite Wilde being a huge success during the fin de siècle, his popularity sharply declined in 1895 when he was incarcerated after being arrested and convicted of ‘gross indecency’ for his homosexuality. He spent the final three years of his life in poverty and in exile, until he died on the streets of Paris at the end of 1900 from meningitis.
Paolozzi’s conceptual artwork is intended to be erected in a public garden in Dovehouse Green (Chelsea) near Oscar Wilde’s former home and will commemorate 170 years since Wilde’s birth this October. However, not everyone is pleased by this piece. Merlin Holland (Wilde’s grandson) argues that despite appreciating the innovativeness of modern art, this specific piece has gone too far, describing the artwork as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘absolutely hideous’. Holland emphasised, ‘How do we want to remember him? Amusing, entertaining, engaging or carved up and beheaded for breaking the law of the time?’ Instead of remembering Wilde for his literary success, some might argue that he is being remembered for his downfall or demise.
On the other hand, Paolozzi argued that a design for a statue of Wilde needed to be conceptual instead of representational. During the initial stages of commissioning a sculpture of Wilde, Paolozzi was one of six candidates asked to design scale models. After submitting his designs in 1995, the committee (chaired by Sir Jeremy Isaacs) rejected the design for being ‘too brutalist’.
Instead, Maggie Hambling’s sculpture was chosen and installed in London in 1998. Hambling’s sculpture depicted the bust of Wilde emerging from a granite sarcophagus, with an inscription of one of Wilde’s famous epigrams upon it. This sculpture, unlike Paolozzi’s sculpture, was described as ‘witty and amusing’.
The reason that Paolozzi’s sculpture is being erected now, almost thirty years after its design, is due to The Paolozzi Foundation intending to install the work to commemorate 100 years since the artist’s birth in 1924. They also insisted that this will be a ‘monumental work’ due to the fact that both Oscar Wilde and Eduardo Paolozzi worked within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. On the organisation’s website (paolozzifoundation.org), they describe the reasoning for the installation of the piece as ‘bringing together two Titans of the arts who lived and worked in Chelsea’. Merlin Holland disagrees again, emphasising that ‘[the committee] just didn’t feel that a segmented head of Oscar would represent what he wanted the public to enjoy and admire about him’.
So, who is this sculpture really a dedication to? Is it to Wilde or to Paolozzi? Is it really commemorating the life of Oscar Wilde or is it simply highlighting the suffering that Wilde endured during the end of his life? Can a person understand and appreciate the work of Wilde through this new sculpture, or is it a piece to be confused or even disgusted by?
Edited by Ben Bryant