Royal Academy Prefers Plinth to Sculpture

“One Day Closer to Paradise” is what David Hensel named a piece he submitted to the Royal Academy for a place in its Summer Exhibition. Sam Jones of the Guardian wrote, “The piece, a dark face frozen in laughter and balancing precariously on a slab of slate, is amusing and sinister.” Except that the judges decided that the plinth upon which it rested was worth displaying, while the head was not.

Now, Mr. Hensel isn’t a hack, or a poseur, he’s a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and a lecturer in sculpture at University College Chichester. Paying jobs for sculptors being thin on the ground, he is generally deemed to be good or he’d be working elsewhere. The head is fairly well executed, and it looks like a head – thus scoring over a great many works of modern art. Two eyes, one on either side of the nose, and only one of those, it is recognizably a head.

Mr. Hensel’s work apparently arrived at the Academy in two pieces; the head and the plinth were, therefore, judged separately. As a flak for the Royal Academy said, “The base was thought to have merit and accepted; it is currently on display. The head has been safely stored ready to be collected by the artist.” A bit later, according to Mr. Jones’ article, the Academy’s spokeswoman said the exhibition's coordinators had yet to make their “final” decision. That has “we goofed,” written all over it.

Mr. Hensel is being a pretty good sport about it. “It’s a bit of a cock up but I’m not cross about it at all, I’m actually amused. I’ve seen the funny side but I’ve also seen the philosophical side ... It shows up not just the tastes of the selectors but also their unawareness.”

Indeed, it points up the great flaw in modern art. Having decided to bash all conventions, modern art contains a pointless nihilism in which there is no convention at all. Without standards, there is no basis for determining what is good and what is not. Or what is the sculpture and what is the plinth.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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