Great: now we have a monument to a living protester; this should not be a personality cult!

Hmmmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

A surge of power!

Banksy's plan would have been better.

[quote] Arriving in two lorries before 5am, a team of 10 people worked quickly to install the figure of Reid, who said she had been secretly working with Quinn on the idea for weeks. It came as a complete surprise to the authorities, who are yet to announce their plans for the location.

well this puts Bristol council in a bind.

[quote] But Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees said in a statement: "The sculpture that has been installed today was the work and decision of a London-based artist. It was not requested and permission was not given for it to be installed."

Doesn't sound like Bristol is too pleased.

Someone needs to install a sculpture of Chrissy Metz

Hmmm

I was not 'birthed' by a black woman and don't this new verb 'to birth'.

I much prefer the Dot Matrix statue in Las Vegas in honor of Joan Rivers, entertainer extraordinaire.

Why isn't she wearing a mask?

r5 Stronger wording than I expected. Though I guess the fact that it looks so plasticity may have influenced their opinion a bit.

It will get pulled down in no time. Officially the council will know nothing about it, but unofficially...

[quote] Ms Reid said the new statue is "amazing" and "something that fills her with pride". But Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees suggested it will be taken down pending a democratic consultation.

Take it down!

"London-based" is how the artist is described. Ouch.

Shouldn't it look more like this?

Or, perhaps, this?

A monument to Meghan a strong woman-of-color advocate for BLM would have been much more appropriate.

Perhaps this?

[quote] Someone needs to install a sculpture of Chrissy Metz

We're gonna need a bigger plinth.

r18 Statues in the UK have to be able to accommodate a traffic cone hat. So its probably a non-starter.

"Marc Quinn loves money not blacks," was one insightful comment reported in The Guardian utphread. This stunt appears to be controversial because race is involved. One has to admire the artist's self-promotional skills.

If it was installed without permission, they should remove it, melt it down, send the bronze bar back, and a bill for the removal, plus a huge fine and a lien against all property of the subject and the artist. And fines for anyone who installed it.

Wow R22. Fines all round! Outstanding! But this is trespassing. The artist and subject both seem to be pushy narcissists who need to be ... fined for their borish instrusiveness. The articles linked above keep getting edited because this is such a touchy subject but in one report the Karen was said to have opined, "This [my statue] isn't going anywhere soon." She seems to feel quite entitled; she'll be expecting us to kow tow next: deluded. The mayor seems to have other plans.

Banksy's plan would have been much better.

"I think it's something the people of Bristol really appreciate seeing," said Ms Reid.

"My husband took the photo on the day of the protests and put it on his social media. He was contacted by Marc Quinn who then contacted myself.

"I was in his studio by the Friday after the protest with 201 cameras surrounding me, taking pictures of me from every conceivable angle. That went into a 3D print and a mould was made."

So it is not an actual sculpture, just a 3D print.

A 3D print? I imagine it's ludicrously easy to tear down.

Not impressed

Now Quinn is claiming it's only temporary art. Is BLM temporary also? And is BLM a thing in the UK? Don't they have their own movement (black history is very different fom place to place, like UK and US).

R27 the mould was a 3D print, not the statue itself.

R7 it is funny because trans have to make everything about themselves, even BlackLivesMatter, hence the "centering" of "Black trans lives matter" rather than all black lives.

That sculptor is a real work of art. 3D indeed from photography.

Well, it doesn't feature a pompadour.

That Jen chick isn't trans is she?

I don't think this will end well.

R35 you may be right. It has started really badly. I imagine Jen is already bitterly complaining that Quinn used her in his 'temporary' art publucity stunt; there will be the inevitable claim for compensation/reparations.

Bigots have to make every thread an anti-trans thread.

ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.

R37 shove it up your shenis

We need a statue of the women who looted a mattress and box spring during a Chicago riot.

The statue will be white shortly after the pigeons find it.

R40 It will be in the next Venice Biennale

will it float in water, just in case?

I would have much preferred a local artist - perhaps Banksy himself - and a Bristolian protester but I quite like the idea behind it. Better than a despicable old bigot at least.

As awful as the Lucy statue is R33, it was actually sculpted incompetently by an awful artist, not run through a 3-D or CT scanner and printer from photographs. That's how Jeff Koons and others "sculpt".

Bye Winnie

Although the sentiment behind the statue is powerful, I think removal is probably the right decision. There was no official health and safety assessment before it was put up. If they let it stay, it could set a risky precedent.

It was a monument to narcissism.

The artist is the same asshole who did the pregnant woman with no limbs and put it on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar square. Fucking eyesore I had to pass every morning.

90% of 20th century public sculpture is garbage.

[quote] the pregnant woman with no limbs Fucking eyesore I had to pass every morning.

What was the problem, was she black, trans, or what?

^ she was morbidly obese

black, trans and morbidly obese and pregnant? FFS

Just one more thing that will get Trump re-elected

...................

I don't think I've ever seen a city council move so fast. They really hated that statue.

I love this image.

I don't get why everyone here is so angry at that statue. It's an art stunt, symbolic protest. Whyt's your problem?

People get pissed about stunts by out of town opportunists that cost the public money.

They should have knocked the arm off first to show how arrogant the whole thing was.

This has morphed into something different than the injustice against black men and has become a black-power movement. They’re two very different things. One is a push for justice and an end to racist stereotyping. The other is a racist movement. This statue represents the later IMO. I hope it’s knocked down.

It's ironic that black leaders in New York who called for police plain clothed divisions are now calling for them to return because of a spike in murders and shootings. Perhaps the old system wasn't so bad at all. Train the cops to deal with difficult situations differently, give them regular psychiatric tests, and let's continue to keep the criminals off the streets.

LOL Black people hate the statue.

[Quote] A white artist, Marc Quinn, made this in collaboration with Jen Reid — if we want to talk about the constrained imaginary that is simply replacing statues to white supremacy with our own likenesses and not disrupting the aesthetic regime of colonial idolatry, let’s start there.

It's rubish.

If a fox could crow...

"The BBC reported Quinn will be charged with the cost of the statue’s removal" Cheap publicity all the same for a cheap artist.

"Edward Colston's statue stood for 125 years. The Black Lives Matter statue that replaced it stood for about 25 hours"

That Bristol mayor moved fast ... "the sculpture has caused a divide in the art world, with some suggesting that the intervention of a White, London-based artist is unhelpful to the wider Black Lives Matter movement."

So cool! That was fast work. They should have let it stand longer then moved it to private property or to a place where the landowner (private or public) would appreciate it.

Nowadays, almost any sculpture can be controversial in a public setting. The biggest city in my county has an art commission that rules over what art goes where. There can be great hullabaloos over even the most unremarkable art. Put in something controversial and there's hell to pay. There are some wonderful large sculptures around, many on private property and even those sometimes get stolen or vandalized.

The "Door to Hell" sculpture was quite the good time.

Link to my post at R66.

Quinn, a whitey, fails to have understood the difference between BLM and Black Power. Jen had him there, ha, ha!

Bye Jen.

Why is this happening in the UK? What does BLM have to do with the UK?

R71 I wish someone would explain, "What does BLM have to do with the UK?"

Jen?

R71, racial profiling happens frequently over here. Young black men are far more likely to be stopped and searched, they do less well in education, are more likely to live in poverty and therefore more like to turn to crime. In some areas of Britain 75% of stop and searches are of young black men. So there is a need for review and reform in many areas.

Those were her 15 minutes.

R73 BLM is about black people being killed by the police, frequently. Stop and search, education, poverty are completely different, very important, issues.

[quote] Those were her 15 minutes.

If only. She's a Black Power bitch. This is the first brick in her platform, starting with how I was used and misled by Quinn.

R75, Black or Asian (predominantly from the Indian subcontinent) people are still more likely to die in police custody than a white person is. Shootings by police are very unusual. There were 3 last year. Sometimes there are zero. Black and Asian people are more likely to be incarcerated than white people. It might not be as life threatening but institutionalised racism still needs dealt with and the BLM movement has brought this to the forefront.

[quote] institutionalised racism

Institutional racism doesn't exist.