The anonymous artist behind two DC sculptures commemorating insurrectionist fecal matter on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and Charlottesville white supremacists’ tiki torches may have struck again — or inspired someone else, this time in Philadelphia.
Charlotte Cohen, executive director of the city’s Association for Public Art, told Hyperallergic that she was unaware of a crudely gesturing golden statue of Donald Trump installed behind artist Gerhard Marcks’s bronze “Maja” (1942) in Maja Park until a reporter from the Washington Post called her for comment on Wednesday, October 30.
An unknown artist had surreptitiously erected the Trump effigy with a cupped hand pointed toward the nude female figure and a plaque that read, “In honor of a lifetime of sexual assault.” The plinth description features an excerpted transcription of Trump’s infamous “grab them by the pussy” remarks from a recording made in 2005 and leaked ahead of the 2016 presidential election. A duplicate of the statue appearing in Philadelphia cropped up days earlier in Portland facing Norman Taylor’s abstract nude “Kvinneakt” (1975). Hours after it appeared, the Oregonian reported, the sculpture was mysteriously beheaded.
“When I first saw the images of it, I thought, oh, it’s really disrespectful to women, facing this really gentle, beautiful form,” said Cohen, whose organization restored the sculpture and placed it in the park.
But when she read the text, she understood that the installation was actually a work of satire, which she called “brilliant.”
“This is what public art is all about,” Cohen said. “These kinds of dialogues and debates and standing by your words when you’re quoted in such a manner in public.”
“Maja” once stood near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was held away from public view for over 25 years until 2021, when it was relocated to a new public park named after the work. Gerhard Marcks was labeled a degenerate artist by the Nazis and was dismissed from his teaching positions in 1922 after attempting to defend Jewish students and colleagues from persecution. “Maja” also survived a 1943 bombing of Marcks’s Berlin studio, according to the Association for Public Art.
The Washington Post reported that a man claiming to be the artist behind the desk turd and tiki torch bronze tipped the publication off to the Trump figure in Maja Park.
Cohen said that by the time Ashley Lippos, the organization’s communication associate, arrived at the park to take photos of the unauthorized installation, city employees were preparing to remove it because the responsible artists did not have a permit. “It was probably pretty lightweight because two people were able to pick it up,” Cohen added.
On Thursday, October 31, a giant statue characteristic of the pale and naked 43-foot Trump figure that anonymous organizers have paraded through battleground states like Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan popped up on Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia.
In comparison to the nude representation of Trump, Cohen said the work in Maja Park represents Trump’s own words.
On the particular individual or group behind the feces and tiki works, and possibly the work in Maja Park, Cohen remarked, “They’re taking an incredibly smart, satirical stance.”
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