For the full effect read this with 'Poses' by Rufus Wainwright playing in the background.
This is the new Dennis Bergkamp statue outside the Emirates:
Fifty yards away there's a giant photograph of him in the same pose:
That photograph was taken by Andrew Budd during a 2003 game against Newcastle (one all draw. Thierry Henry scored). He works for Action Images, the sports photography branch of Reuters.
It took me five minutes to find out his name, even though the Reuters schtick is not to draw attention to the individual photographer or journalist. It must have been in Arsenal's PR pack for the papers. However, I can't find the name of the sculptor anywhere. It might be that Arsenal were miffed because someone leaked pictures of the statue being put together and this was their way of taking revenge, but I doubt it. It's more likely that no-one thought it worth mentioning.
There's something terribly old-fashioned about that. It's a complete writing out of the maker and the artist.
The composition's taken from a newswire and the sculptor might as well not exist.
Curious that.
Pretty sure the south London props company MDM (http://www.mdmprops.co.uk) were responsible for not only DB10, but also the statues of Adams, Henry and Chapman outside the stadium too. It being an agency, there probably wasn't just one single artist working on the project, which might explain the anonymity!
ReplyDeleteGood detective work Sam - thank you. Still, I'm not sure you can say that it's made by a workshop and so there isn't an artist. Rembrandt had a workshop and Reynolds hardly did any actual painting.
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