Paris ‘sex toy’ sculpture sabotaged at Place Vendome

That thing I wrote about the other day?

It’s been sabotaged!

A huge inflatable sculpture inspired by a sex toy has been sabotaged days after it was installed in Paris.

The 24m (80ft) sculpture on Place Vendome in Paris was brought down when supporting cords were cut.

Earlier, US artist Paul McCarthy told a French newspaper that he was attacked by a man who said the sculpture had no place being on the street.

The sculpture is part of the week-long International Contemporary Art Fair in the French capital.

The art fair said it would restore the deflated sculpture as soon as it could.

McCarthy told French newspaper Le Monde that his work, entitled Tree, was an “abstract work” rooted in a joke about a sex toy and was also inspired by a Christmas tree.

Police said the sculpture had been attacked overnight.

“An unidentified group of people cut the cables which were holding the artwork, which caused it to collapse,” police said.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the attack was unacceptable, and also denounced the attack on McCarthy.

“Paris will not succumb to the threats of those who, by attacking an artist or a work, are attacking artistic freedom,” she said.

“Art has its place in our streets and nobody will be able to chase it away.”

Blah blah blah fishcakes.

That’s not art. It’s prog agit-prop.

Kudos to whoever did it! 🙂

And may the same fate meet any replacement work (hey, if it’s really art, wouldn’t it be ‘irreplaceable’, like if someone defaced the Mona Lisa, for instance?)

All is fair in love and war, say some.

Well, this is a war. A culture war.

And culture war can be waged back!

Deliberately provocative American artist outrages Parisians with sculpture that looks like a butt plug, ostensibly inspired by both the sex toy and Christmas trees

Asshole.

A huge, green, inflatable sculpture on a famous Paris square has raised a storm for its resemblance to a sex toy, with the artist attacked in the street.

US artist Paul McCarthy told French newspaper Le Monde that his work entitled Tree had been inspired both by a sex toy and a Christmas tree.

When he went to see it on Place Vendome, a man slapped his face before running away, the paper says.

[…]

The stranger, who slapped him three times, shouted that he was not French and that his work had “no business being on the square”, the paper writes.

[…]

Indignant comments about Tree itself included “Place Vendome defaced!” and “Paris humiliated!”

The square with its towering Column, Napoleon’s monument to the Battle of Austerlitz (closed until next year for restoration), is famous for its luxury hotels such as the Ritz.

Good on the man who slapped him – he’s right about it not belonging there – and the others who have condemned it.

Alas, as the article mentions, some folks thought it was a lark.