Wilde Thoughts

My father introduced me to the words and wit of Oscar Wilde when I was still in primary school. Beginning with The Importance Of Being Earnest [A Handbag?!? and To lose one parent... etc] and moving on through The Happy Prince and the Selfish Giant [which I find so moving] and The Ideal Husband. And as I got older, I read the "darker" stuff like Dorian Gray and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Dad felt Wilde was a gifted writer who had been cruelly treated - his treatment in prison contributing to his early death.

In 2006 on our motorbike holiday in Ireland, I sat and chatted to him in Galway.

This is part of a sculpture by Estonian artist Tiiu Kirsipuu, and was given to the people of Galway in 2004 .

There are are couple of other famous memorial statues to Wilde. The first was unveiled in Dublin in 1997 and financed by the Guinness Company, and created by English sculptor Danny Osborne.

It is amazingly colourful, marble alone was deemed inadequate- it also contains green nephrite  [Canada] blue pearl granite and pink thulite [both from  Norway] and black charnockite [India] It is located near his childhood home

There were mixed reactions - many felt it made too much of Wilde's homosexuality. In 1998, Maggi Hambling's "Conversation with Oscar Wilde" was unveiled in Westminster, London.. It is made of green granite and shows Wilde's head and torso emerging from a coffin, a cigarette in his hand. The artist based it on the anecdote that just prior to his demise, Wilde told a friend 

"I dreamed I was at dinner, dining and chatting with the dead" So here you can sit on his coffin and chat with him! [I have to say I prefer Galway's bench - and Dublin's chap does remind me of  a slimmer Stephen Fry ]  

Mervyn Holland, Wilde's grandson is happy with all these three representations. 

BUT there's a new one about to be revealed in Chelsea, and this has definitely divided opinions already. Eduard Paolozzi's design also made the final shortlist for the 1998 statue. EP died in 2005, and this year is the centenary of his birth. Paolozzi lived and worked in Chelsea for over 40 years, and Wilde also lived in the borough. The Paolozzi Foundation have decided to mark this by having the 1998 Wilde design made up and installed on Dovehouse Green. 

There was an initial objection that you cannot put a statue of a gay man on what was formerly a burial ground, and is still 'consecrated land' [even though it is now a public park]. The Church Consistory Court overruled this ['he was not that good an author' 'the council does not spend money wisely''Wilde was gay' were all considered invalid objections] More to the point, Mervyn Holland says it is 'absolutely hideous' failing to convey his wit and brilliance - 'anyone contemplating it will more likely think of Wilde's tragic end than the joy of his writing'. 

It is a vast bronze head, segmented, lying on its side. "A man who was decapitated by society" Personally I think it is ghastly, and I can see why Dame Judi Dench and the rest of the committee rejected this back in the nineties" What do you think of it? 

In the preface to Dorian Gray, Wilde says this - was he right?