Statue to honour Wollstonecraft

[MedusasBadHairDay]

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/10/mary-wollstonecraft-finally-honoured-with-statue-after-200-years

It's a naked woman..

Currently reading A Vindication of the Rights of Woman for an OU course, and - unless the tone changes dramatically in the second half of it - I'm not seeing how an idealised nude is the right statue to convey anything about her?

so disappointed with this. An 'everywoman' emerging from a formless mass. yet again, not a material or a biological reality. Rather a naked form emerging / reborn out of ideas of 'woman'. Can we not have anything? FFS.

We contributed to the fundraiser - the kids with their pocket money and in other times were planning on attending the unveiling. It’s a bit disappointing but I guess the statue isn’t her it’s a metaphor for her beliefs.

But why naked mercedes. I don’t get that.

It’s a bit disappointing but I guess the statue isn’t her it’s a metaphor for her beliefs

Why aren't statues of naked men 'metaphors of beliefs'? (David excluded)?

I hate it, I don’t know what else to say right now. I’m going to have to come back to it later and think about it again, it’s making me angry. It’s not so much the nudity for me (although I also have issues with that) as how it diminishes her.

Please can someone local hi and put som clothes on her? A Woman: Adult Female Human hoodie would be nice and cosy

This is a monument to Maggie Hamblin not Mary Wollstonecraft. You could put quotes from anyone on the plinth. As a tribute to her life and work, her actual intellect it is meaningless. It could just as easily represent Eve.

I absolutely loath it. Was there really a public vote on this? Begs the question of who decided to vote, all the MRAs.?

Just saw this on twitter and wondered if someone here may have done a thread.

If you're out with your kids and they see a statue of someone, like Wellington, they might ask who he is. Is any child going to ask who the naked lady is? I doubt it, because she's not presented as an important person, she's just a random part of some random piece of art.

Maybe once we've got to the hundredth famous woman honoured in the old boring traditional way, perhaps it will be time to move on to something a bit more artsy and provocative, but given that a regular likeness with plaque still seems pretty popular for men, is it really too much to ask that women are treated the same.

Ffs.

I know it's weird, but I always feel a bit sorry for naked statues (always female) in our climate!
I live in Aberdeen, and in the town centre there is a statue to some King I used to walk past every day. The king is high above the street on his plinth. At the base of the plinth, there are female figures representing... something. Maybe one of them is Britannia. Some are clothed, but there are also a couple of girls who are naked for some unfathomable reason. In the winter, when it is sleeting or blowing a freezing gale, I walk past those girls and I shiver on their behalf.

I wish they could build a statue of Wollstencraft. Actually OF her, like male writers get.
Not a naked every woman. That particular "every woman" is everywhere in art already.
She is almost always perky, curvy, young, flat stomachs and naked.

How long until there are complaints that the naked figure excludes some women because she has no penis?

I suppose we should be grateful that the "every woman" is at least female.

Well that was a totally missed opportunity 🙄
No one is going to see that statue then be motivated to find out about her work & life.

& yes as PP said this is 100% about memorialising the artist rather than MW.

I was delighted by the thread title but very grumpy now!

Laughing 😂

@Prestel

Just saw this on twitter and wondered if someone here may have done a thread.

If you're out with your kids and they see a statue of someone, like Wellington, they might ask who he is. Is any child going to ask who the naked lady is? I doubt it, because she's not presented as an important person, she's just a random part of some random piece of art.

Maybe once we've got to the hundredth famous woman honoured in the old boring traditional way, perhaps it will be time to move on to something a bit more artsy and provocative, but given that a regular likeness with plaque still seems pretty popular for men, is it really too much to ask that women are treated the same.

Ffs.

For exactly this (and all the other reasons above) I hate it too. A massively influential male thinker being 'honoured' like this is unimaginable.

I feel like I should apologise for giving you all false hope with the thread title Though tbf you all get to run the same emotional gamut I did when I saw the Guardian headline.

Ginger pubes 😂 can see on twitter many women are just WTAF is this statue about

That's so disappointing.

I'd have expected something much better from Hambling, though I suppose there's only one piece of her work I'm familiar with which IMO is utterly brilliant and really does honour a great woman and her work. Almost the polar opposite of the perfect, static, bland nude.

www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw07497/Dorothy-Hodgkin

From Caroline criado perez

In Wollstonecraft's own words: “Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” Just sad, really sad.

I liked this from the article:

“It will definitely start a conversation,” said the writer Bee Rowlatt, who has led the campaign to get a sculpture celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green, north London. “It will definitely promote comment and debate and that’s good, that’s what Mary did all her life.”

Sounds like what you say when you are trying not to blurt out "how shit is this?"

I like the concept, but with a naked Mary, it is a bit birth of Venus. She doesn't look very organic or of her time. It is a bit of a stiff body building barbie figure with an 18th century head.

I may have read the Attwood thread a little too much, but it looks like Wollstonecraft emerging from amophous modern womanhood to be a manufactured symbol of something she wasn't.