THIS $100,000 bronze sculpture of a “real” British family was unveiled this week in front of the Library of Birmingham. The models were two single women with their sons. Gillian Wearing, the artist, says, “A nuclear family is one reality but it is one of many and this work celebrates the idea that what constitutes a family should not be fixed.” This bleak portrait of two haggard zombies doesn’t seem to succeed in celebrating anything. But perhaps their haggardness is seen as heroic.

The sculpture in front of the $188 million new library is a way of saying, “Even though we built this egotistic monstrosity, we are the people, we love the people.”

Interestingly, the women who posed for the statue were mixed race, but Wearing chose to portray them as white.

— Comments —

Terry Morris writes:

Fanfare for the common tramp.

B.E. writes:

The uninspiring statue is bad enough, but when I saw that hideous building, I thought immediately of Roger Scruton’s video essay/documentary, “Why Beauty Matters.” He spends considerable time on the assault on beauty that is modern architecture, and why this public expression of ugliness is so harmful to society as a whole.

Beyond being ugly and garish, the building is unserious to the point of being silly. In that sense, it represents modern Western society extremely well.

Incidentally, in our modern moral morass, there is no way that the statue is meant to be understood as two single mothers with their children; it clearly represents a lesbian couple and the children they have deprived of fathers in order to indulge themselves.

Laura writes:

Yes, it is clearly intended to be a lesbian couple because single women never walk this way hand-in-hand with their children.

B. E. writes:

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but my first impression was of a lesbian couple.

I’m not saying that the statue can’t be interpreted as two sisters (or two unrelated women),  shouldn’t be interpreted that way; I’m saying that in the current pro-homosexual environment, there is no way that the creator and approvers of this statute were unaware that many people would take it as representing a lesbian couple.

Laura writes:

Let me correct my previous comment.

I suspect it was intentionally ambiguous.

James F. writes:

Who needs to read a dystopian novel when you have real life?   The unfortunate thing is that most people would see the obvious absurdity of this nonsense if they weren’t drowning in a sea of pro homosexual propaganda — brainwashing them on a daily basis.  Ultimately our leaders and intellectuals are responsible for all of this — their true motives being hidden behind a mask of sympathy and tolerance.  I wonder what all these perverts will think when they come to realize that they are all just a part of some mad scientist’s social engineering experiment, one which is already border-lining on eugenics (and we already know where that will lead).  Yes, we might have to turn our eyes away from their shame, but they will have to live with it.  Gay pride, hah.  “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”  They themselves will be the first to tear down such statues when the light shines through to the darkness within the hearts of men.

From Matthew 18:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

James P. writes:

Why not a statue of drunken, tattooed British girls vomiting in the gutter as women in hijabs look on in disgust?

Alec writes:

The library looks like a mosque.

Mrs. D. writes:

1. To me, the library looks like a Kleenex box.

2. The statue is wonderful artwork. It immediately conveys incompleteness. The boys each look sad and lost and without joy at that age. No one is looking at the other. No one is smiling. There appears to be no longer any desire for communication among the group. A collection of isolates. I don’t see how the artist could have more aptly expressed common tragedy. Bravo.

Laura writes:

Exactly.

I don’t agree with the complaints of conservatives that were quoted in The Daily Mail. The sculpture conveys the horror of family breakdown — even though that was not the artist’s intention.

James P. writes:

Mrs. D. writes,

“No one is looking at the other. No one is smiling. There appears to be no longer any desire for communication among the group. A collection of isolates.”

Great point! To make it perfect, the artist should have shown them all looking at their phones instead of interacting with each other — a sad phenomenon one sees every day.

Please follow and like us: