Towards New Monuments
What lessons can emerging monument makers learn from the careers of two senior sculptors?
Recently, I looked at two senior public sculptors: Michael Sandle RA (b. 1936), a Modernist, and Alexander “Sandy” Stoddart FRSE (b. 1959), a Neoclassicist. This is on the occasion of the publication of a new book on Sandle’s art (Jon Wood, Michael Sandle: Works on Paper, 2023, Sansom & Company, Bristol, 180pp, 250 illus., £40). This caused me to reflect on two paths regarding monumental sculpture in Britain.
Sandle gained prominence in the late 1970s when his monuments criticising American imperialism and commemorating war dead. A period of teaching in Germany cemented his reputation there and compensated for a lack of realised commissions. What are the recurring elements of Sandle’s sculptural vision? Emphatic geometric form, prioritisation of structural rigidity, dynamism of the diagonal, rhythm of repeated forms, hybridisation of mechanical and human, comparison between skeleton and armour. Sandle’s profound pessimism about human nature tempers his moral repugnance at the slaughter of innocents. Sandle understands the inevitability of conflict even though he deplores it and argues for human compassion. Sandle is compelled by the brutal strength and ingenious design of weaponry and armour; he sees that the aerodynamic sweep of the nose cone of a missile resembles the gothic arch and wing span of a bomber is the outstretched arms of crucified Christ, as noble as Vitruvian Man’s pose. One can think of Sandle as at one with the Medieval artist who possessed the awe of mortal man before the might of a vengeful unknowable God.
Sandle’s uncompromising approach and his mixing of materials gives his art an idiosyncratic and surprising qualities. His St George and the Dragon (1988) has the energy of Futurist figure by Boccioni, with the diagonal bas plane adding a precarious forward motion and send of instability – something that has been diminished by the addition of raised walkway around the column. His best-known completed monument is the Malta Siege Monument (1988-92), which combines architecture and figural elements. The haunting presence of the dead body, draped and resting on a catafalque, underlines the price paid in a way that is grave and dignified. It also has an air of inevitability. The International Maritime Organization Seafarers' Memorial (2001), situated on the Albert Embankment, London has a sailor atop the prow of a ship, the front sliver of which acts as a column, raising and isolating the figure. Its position facing the river, which is only a few metres away gives the monument a sense of anticipation, as the viewer mentally conflates the intimated forward momentum with the proximity of the river.
In the case of Scot Sandy Stoddart, the King’s Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland, more of his sculptures have reached completion because of their more conservative approach and smaller size. Stoddart has also had the benefit of sculpting for a smaller audience and having fewer direct competitors in the field of Scottish figure sculpting, although his works have been commissioned worldwide. He trained as Glasgow School of Art from 1976 to 1980, where he found himself first following, then diverging from, the Modernist line of his tutors. He became enraptured by the Neoclassical sculpture of Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844), whose Copenhagen museum he describes as “the best in the world”. In the Royal Mile stand two of Stoddart’s statues of philosopher David Hume and economist Adam Smith. Other pubic statues are of James Clerk Maxwell, Robert Louis Stevenson and William Playfair. These represent Stoddart’s seriousness and his refusal to dally in projects that commemorate the unimportant but popular or topically political. He has declared, “I do artists, philosophers and poets.” He believes that culture allows the living to commune with the dead.
Stoddart’s approach is orthodoxly Neoclassical, aesthetically speaking. His head of Henry Moore turns the bruiser of Modernist abstract sculpture into a Roman senator, complete with toga over one shoulder. His standing figures are dignified and in repose, with no action, allowing the representation to be primarily a likeness rather than a narrative episode. Stoddart situates his sculptures conventionally, on plinths and pedestals. For those familiar with classical conventions, the artist does not disrupt the interaction between the viewer and subject, either formally or emotionally. He does not use the sculpture as a means to destabilise expectations on any level. He keeps the subject reserved and dignified, undefiled by the modern fashion for the informal or unstable nor to presume to add anything new. There are no new “takes” and no wilful insertion of the artist’s ego or the notions of his age. That, in itself, is an act of radical refusal. The subjects, style and the artist’s Christian anti-progressive comments have drawn the ire of liberals. It is exactly these type of statues that were toppled during recent iconoclasm.
I do not care to proclaim preference between the two. They are both significant sculptors who have performed at the highest level, despite the practical and sectional hurdles facing them throughout their careers. Stoddart has seen more of his pieces reach completion due to the general international demand for monumental statuary that may be applied to many subjects, while Sandle’s monuments are more specific in character, subject and siting.
Any newly emerging artist intending to be a maker of modern monuments has to confront a parlous situation in Great Britain. The situation facing monument-makers comprises of four major problems and two minor ones. The major ones are A) a lack of faith in monuments that have artistic integrity, B) hostility towards the majority population (the majority of artists and fitting subjects); C) a dearth of funding for civic monuments of traditionally heroic character; and D) opposition to the notion of the great man as master of history. The minor ones are E) the selection of artists on the basis of demographic characteristics, which excludes talented artists who are heterosexual, white, able-bodied men; and F) the feeling against great men extends to great artists, so a distinctive distinguished artist is at a disadvantage.
It seems to me that the successors to Sandle and Stoddart face problems that stand apart from the two artistic approaches. Any sculptor working in the Neoclassical line will get more work but less control – perhaps fittingly so, for a school that revels in constricted expression within fixed rules. Simply receiving commissions will become ever more difficult.
This is, for anyone who has already considered the field, obviously apparent. The question is what can those who wish to change the situation do it? On the issue of financing, crowd-funding is an immediate route around the barriers to the public purse. It should be possible for groups and loose networks, as well as social-media influencers and public figures, to raise enough support for a £100,000 sculpture to be erected, should that piece be accomplished enough. As municipal spaces will likely be unavailable, semi-public spaces like forecourts of private buildings – such as that housing Sandle’s St George.
Residentially owned parks are liable to householder activism at the prompting of outsiders talking up the threat to safety posed by quasi-fascist sculpture. This aversion to controversy and dispute will likely prevent the installation of controversial non-progressive art, even if the majority of residents support a project or are neutral towards it. Obviously, there are problems with a private, commercially or communally owned locations, primarily that of a change in control and subsequent dismantling or re-siting of the sculpture. However, as there is no ultimate fixity, we can only think in terms or what is sustainable now and in the near future.
This raises the question, can a monument be detached from its time? Can a monument be erected for a future people, different in national character, social culture, ethnic composition and religious faith from the people of the day? Should an artist of today – working in unfavourably volatile social conditions, including massive demographic alteration and a top-down campaign to erase extant historical ties between the native population, their land and their material history – take into account a future where his own people are a weakened minority in a contested social landscape, where civic predominance of his people is no longer a fact? Conversely, in a state of strife, when elite-stratum aggressors take delight in enforcing “cultural enrichment” upon the populace, could a sculptor make a monument that expresses gratitude for a future national awakening that he himself will never see? This might be called “speculative monumentalism” – the practice of shaping material to be appreciated in an imagined future that is quite different to the one that might be reasonably predicted.[i] It is writing novels for the unborn who will be inculcated in beliefs one’s peers do not have. One could say that this has existed previously and can be found in the writings of Thomas Paine, Percy Shelley and all proto-liberals and progressives avant le lettre. It can be found in the writings of the Beats and the culture of the underground homosexual scenes of Nineteenth Century London and Weimar Republic Germany.
This is the point where I shall leave discussion of speculative monumentalism for a future meditation.
[i] Consider the Ruinenwert concept of the National Socialist architects, which imagined their buildings as ruins which would prove to be ennobling for future peoples to consider.