Yesterday I visited Hampstead Heath, to renew my acquaintance with the magnificent view of London that you can see from there, and also to see this rather entertaining sculpture, installation, visual pun, prank, call it what you will. Basically, it is a giant table and chair. It is called “The Writer”, because your average writer uses a table and a chair when writing. Hampstead Heath was chosen by The Writer’s creator, Giancarlo Neri, because of Hampstead’s literary associations. It will be on the Heath until October.
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You cannot please everybody when it comes to public sculpture. Personally, I reckon just about anything is better than the kind of meaningless lumps that used to disfigure London – in fact more or less everywhere – in the sixties and seventies, until the fashion for sculpture that is of something came roaring back. The meaningless lumps were ugly as sin, and took themselves about as seriously as a religious cult, which they were. Neri’s installations, on the other hand, have a bit of wit and fun about them, like most public sculpture these days. And if you hate it, relax. It will soon be gone. I have my photos and I am happy. You can forget about it.
I particularly like where The Writer has been put. It nestles modestly at the bottom end of Parliament Hill Fields rather than strutting its stuff at the top of Parliament Hill. From Parliament Hill you can see the top of the table (top left) the way you cannot when you are closer to it (top right).
The view through it and back up towards Parliament Hill, with all those even smaller figures on the horizon (bottom left) is a particularly nice one, I think.
The Writer makes good use of the people who flock to gaze at it. It then looks much more amusing than it would be if there were no people under or around it. The joke of how big the table and the chair are only comes alive when there are normal sized people around to dramatise it.
Inevitably, because these are the times we live in, there is a website (bottom right), although I found this BBC report more helpful.
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No.
Looks like it might be a good target for this.
When I was doing structural design in T1 High Strength Low Alloy Steel, I came up with the notion of scaling up the Eiffel Tower in accordance with the capacity of modern materials. I never found a steel company interested in doing anything more than selling me the steel at the going rate for that tonnage.
Does anyone have a huge cigarette packet to place on that table?
That’s fun, it will be funnier if people could jump on it like liliputians.
I like it. I just hope there aren’t more of them. This is a funny once joke.