Thursday, July 16, 2009

the meeting place


This monumental 2007 sculpture by Paul Day is St Pancras station's counterpart to the Jiminez statue at UNM: huge, unmissable, physical, and ugly.   I didn't think that it had any obvious political point, though (a Caucasian heterosexual couple - 30 meters, or whatever they are, of heteronormativity) - with a somewhat dated air - are they a couple from the 2000s, or when?   They look very 1930s, to me, but maybe it's those wrinkled trousers, the tight pencil skirt.

But in fact, the whole statue might be more interesting than it is.   Apparently Day wants to add to its base - add a pair of sunglasses, in which will be reflected, in bas-relief, someone falling onto a railway track - or committing suicide - and just possibly being pulled back (but most probably not).   In the midst of life we are in death, etc.   For some inexplicable reason, there are people who think that this might be a bit too grim a subject for a railway station...

Sculpture nothwithstanding (and there's a figure of John Betjeman just a bit further along, admiring, I suppose, the wonderful restored Victorian architecture, but actually looking rather like Paddington Bear), this is a quite stunning restoration.

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