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This is not a sculpture by Disney.
When we encounter this mermaid, she has no tasteful shell bikini to protect her
modesty. She sits naked on the rock, her mutant limbs, half fish, half flesh curled under
her. Small, and vulnerable and real – modelled on the artist’s own wife – she stares out
to sea, uninterested in the crowds snapping away at her buttocks.
One cannot claim that this statue is a great work of genius. Nevertheless, it makes a
powerful, iconic statement on the landscape, a remarkable achievement for such a small
piece—it is this power that has made Copenhagen’s little mermaid into the city’s symbol.
Will she stay where she is forever? Some have begun to doubt it: cultures for whom
naked girls are, bizarrely, not at the pinnacle of aesthetic admiration may refuse to
tolerate her public shamelessness indefinitely. She has already been given a temporary
burka at least once.
Yet for now she stays and stares at an uncountable loss. She is an exile herself, having
given up home and the power of speech to walk in pain through the streets of a strange
land, knowing only the desire within that she cannot escape. We all walk in her footsteps
from time to time, treading down on a knifelike longing.
Perhaps this is why such a tiny figure can command the entire landscape. Somehow the
sculptor has caught the ironic immensity of her inner life, all that furious desire within
this vulnerable, briefly beautiful frame. She shows her beauty, which cannot win her
prince, to the mirror of the deep and we sense its emptiness.
At the same time, we appreciate her curves directly, and can also believe that the
transformation was worth it. The sea, after all, holds no answers. The sinuous line of
beauty that snakes down a woman’s side and over the swelling curve of her hip answers
almost everything, in my experience. If the prince doesn’t want her, I’ll happily stand
forward.
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007
LAST WEEK: Botticelli's Birth of Venus
modesty. She sits naked on the rock, her mutant limbs, half fish, half flesh curled under
her. Small, and vulnerable and real – modelled on the artist’s own wife – she stares out
to sea, uninterested in the crowds snapping away at her buttocks.
One cannot claim that this statue is a great work of genius. Nevertheless, it makes a
powerful, iconic statement on the landscape, a remarkable achievement for such a small
piece—it is this power that has made Copenhagen’s little mermaid into the city’s symbol.
Will she stay where she is forever? Some have begun to doubt it: cultures for whom
naked girls are, bizarrely, not at the pinnacle of aesthetic admiration may refuse to
tolerate her public shamelessness indefinitely. She has already been given a temporary
burka at least once.
Yet for now she stays and stares at an uncountable loss. She is an exile herself, having
given up home and the power of speech to walk in pain through the streets of a strange
land, knowing only the desire within that she cannot escape. We all walk in her footsteps
from time to time, treading down on a knifelike longing.
Perhaps this is why such a tiny figure can command the entire landscape. Somehow the
sculptor has caught the ironic immensity of her inner life, all that furious desire within
this vulnerable, briefly beautiful frame. She shows her beauty, which cannot win her
prince, to the mirror of the deep and we sense its emptiness.
At the same time, we appreciate her curves directly, and can also believe that the
transformation was worth it. The sea, after all, holds no answers. The sinuous line of
beauty that snakes down a woman’s side and over the swelling curve of her hip answers
almost everything, in my experience. If the prince doesn’t want her, I’ll happily stand
forward.
© lizardmagazine.com, 2007
LAST WEEK: Botticelli's Birth of Venus
Nude Today
with Dr. William A. Lipsmacker
Saturday, December 1, 2007
This week
The Little Mermaid of Copenhagen: not as sweet as she looks
with Dr. William A. Lipsmacker
Saturday, December 1, 2007
This week
The Little Mermaid of Copenhagen: not as sweet as she looks