oday at about 10am the artist Nic Fiddian?Green will complete the installation of his latest monumental sculpture at Ascot. Fire – the name of the sculpture, not actual flames, though we’ll come on to those – will stand 25ft tall and sit opposite the Royal Box for the duration of the racecourse’s Royal Meeting which starts next Tuesday and, confusingly, lasts for five days. Nic Fiddian-Green grooms his giant horse sculpture for Goodwood View gallery The success of Fiddian-Green’s enormous horse heads, the most famous of which dives nose-down at Marble Arch in London but which have also been spotted at Goodwood, Glyndebourne and across the horsey world, demonstrate the enduring popularity for taking popular sporting figures – and, clearly, creatures – significantly increasing their size and casting them in bronze. Over the past year at Newmarket AP McCoy unveiled a statue of himself and the Queen one of herself (and a horse), Fulham erected a statue of George Cohen, Newcastle http://www.rangersteamonline.com/Chris_Kreider_Jersey ne of Alan Shearer and Wigan one of Dave Whelan. Meanwhile Leigh unveiled one of John Woods, Peterborough have one in the works of Chris Turner, Barcelona have announced plans for a Johan Cruyff, Watford are working on a Graham Taylor, Everton are proposing a Howard Kendall, Colin Harvey and Alan Ball trifecta, while in foreign news Alexis Sánchez unveiled a colourful statue of himself in his hometown, Tocopilla, and a bust of a strange smirking caricature of Cristiano Ronaldo was installed in his native Madeira. It is true that Britain continues to create statues of non-sporting inspirations – the past year, for example, has seen major public works commissioned or completed of Henry VII, Victoria Wood and an otter – and also that this is not exactly a new trend. Many Ancient Greeks, after all, could hardly walk past a chunk of marble without sculpting it into a scantily clad discus-thrower. But it was more understandable then, when making a representation of an athlete out of mosaic or masonry was the closest thing they had to an instant replay. Omri Amrany’s statue of Walter Johnson Facebook Twitter Pinterest The family of Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson boycotted the unveiling of Omri Amrany’s statue, which features a motion-blurred right arm. Johnson’s grandson called it ‘hideous’ and ‘ridiculous’. Photograph: Diamond Images/Getty Images For all that both bronze and marble are materials already associated with sport, through Jake Muzzin Womens Jersey the Olympics’ least-important medal and the game played using spherical glass objects respectively, they are two media which in their solidity and permanence seem entirely antithetical to activity. In football, and indeed most sports, being considered statuesque is an insult, yet being rendered statuesque is an honour. It is far better for an individual to be labelled quicksilver or mercurial, or for a team to be in full flow; the phrase “liquid football” might have been coined by Alan Partridge, but it is a perfectly serious aspiration. This whole sporting statue business simply hasn’t been thought through. Geoffrey Green of the Times once asked Matt Busby how he went about building a football team. Busby smiled and said: “A sculptor was once asked how he managed to turn a square slab of stone into, say, an elephant. He said: ‘Easy. I just knock off the bits that don’t look like an elephant.’” So it is that the only similarity between team sports and sculpting seems entirely philosophical. Sport is the most ephemeral of activities. Its finest moments are conjured, savoured and lost in the same instant. They live on only in the memory of those who witnessed them, where they generate a spirit of their own, foggily recalled whirlpools of emotion and incredulity. This is why, while it may be an acceptable way to honour a particularly generous chairman or successful manager, sculpture is the clumsiest and most jarring possible method of remembering a sportsman. What is beautiful when fluent and ephemeral is clumsy when made immobile and http://www.officialhurricanesproshop.com/Jaccob_Slavin_Jerseyhard-edged. Some sculptors, to their credit, have realised this and – often less creditably – tried to do something about it. Omri Amrany, a “mostly self?taught” US-based artist who has specialised in commemorative sporting statues, says he likes to “work with new approaches, like fractal geometry and my own techniques of sculptural montage”, by which he means trying to capture motion in metal. Who are the footballers celebrated in these statues? – quiz Read more Representations of Gordie Howe and Alex Delvecchio made for the Detroit Red Wings both have multiple excess limbs and hockey sticks and appear to be being agonisingly sucked into a space vortex; for a statue of the Arizona Cardinals’ Pat Tillman he gamely attempted to create in bronze the impression of flowing hair on a sprinting athlete and succeeded in making the player look like he was fleeing a burning building with his head on fire. Most famously, the family of the Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson boycotted the unveiling of his statue in horror at his motion-blurred mutant right arm. Johnson’s grandson called it “hideous” and “ridiculous”. He said: “It just doesn’t work. Those big pieces of matter coming out of Walter’s shoulder look like driftwood. I really object to it. Something is really wrong.” (“This is not just about sports; it’s about art,” countered Amrany.) Amrany’s version of Josh Gibson is a little more successful, but there are still better ways for artists to recall the spirit of sportsmen. Another creative type, Daniel Sonenberg, clearly thought so: his opera about Gibson – The Summer King – premiered in Pittsburgh in April (“a serious, thought-provoking piece, musically sound and emotionally musing” according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), and Authentic Kyle Seager Youth Jersey surely had a better chance of capturing the essence of the brilliant black batter who died, drunk and drug-addled, aged 35 in 1947There are other options, some of them very simple. A young Arsenal fan will surely find more inspiration from tapping Thierry Henry’s name into YouTube than from his superficially impressive but emotionally vacant statue of the Frenchman’s celebratory knee-slide outside the Emirates Stadium. Perhaps it’s time for sport to think outside the blocks. There will always be a place for statuary, but its use – like most sportsmen – shouldn’t be set in stone. ? This article was amended on 12 June 2017 because an earlier version said Ascot’s Royal Week starts on Wednesday. This has been corrected to reflect that it starts on Tuesday 20 June
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