From the hoots of derision that accompany each new
eye-popping offering on Trafalgar Square’s infamous
Fourth Plinth
to the sense of civic pride that has
grown to embrace Antony Gormley’s Angel of the
North, public art certainly gets the British talking.
Ah, you might say, but so does the weather and
we grumble about that as well don’t we but as
Oscar Wilde once said:
There is only one thing in life worse than being
talked about, and that is not being talked about.
If ArcelorMittal Orbit had ears my goodness would
they be burning? ArcelorMittal Orbit is the 375-foot
tall sculpture and observation tower in the Queen
Elizabeth Olympic Park at Stratford that opens for
visits on 5 April this year along with the rest of the
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. From the top of the
tower there are panoramic views over the whole of
the park set against a backdrop of the iconic buildings
of the London skyline.
ArcelorMittal Orbit is officially the largest piece of
public art and the tallest sculpture in Great Britain.
Red, twisted and extraordinary it is 72 feet taller than
the Statue of Liberty but almost 700 feet shorter than
the Eiffel Tower. It has been called
a catastrophic
collision between two cranes
,
the Eiffel Tower after
a nuclear attack
and
the Godzilla of public art
.
The Orbit cost the public purse £3.1 million and
£19.6 million was provided by ArcelorMittal the
steel and mining company headed by UK based
businessman Lakshmi Mittal. No matter how heavily
sponsored, the spending of any taxpayers money on
what might be loosely termed a folly will forever
attract controversy and an artwork as unorthodox
and quirky as Arcelormittal Orbit will always polarise
opinion. Sir Anish Kapoor who designed it, aided by
the engineering genius of Cecil Balmond, understands
that not everyone likes his tower but as he told BBC
Radio Four’s Today programme:
The Eiffel Tower was hated by everybody for a good
many years – 50 years or something like that – and
now it’s a mainstay of how we understand Paris.
Cecil Balmond made a direct comparison with one of
London’s most famous buildings:
I remember reading the hoo-ha about St Paul’s -
nobody wanted a dome on a church, they were used
to a spire.
A tad cheeky maybe but I’m with Mr Balmond here.
I’ve long imagined a grumble of Londoners huddled
on Ludgate Hill sneering at the new Cathedral:
He’s ruined it now that Wren! London’s not what it
used to be when I was young
etc.
Public Art From The Cave & The Kings to
The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
