Atoll Blog article uploaded 4th August 2025 discusses the contrasts between acceptance given to and offence taken from nude sculptures publicly sited. But in particular, it explores the current criticism of artistic quality and uncomfortable debates around appropriate sculpted breast size and body shaming of Copenhagen’s newly implanted The Big Mermaid, compared with its older and more unassuming cousin, The Little Mermaid.

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.

Ignoring the more selacious ancient or classical examples of overt erotic nudity in art, I have written before about our cultural acceptance (or not) to general nakedness whenever encountered in more publicly-sited figurative public art and sculpture. As art critic John Berger is reported to have said: “Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display”. The most notable example of that perhaps coming from the 621 years Michelangelo’s ‘David’ has flagrantly posed in Florence without known offence to public decency (370 years of that initially outside in the Palazzo della Signoria). Comparatively-speaking, this makes the 69 years that Sir Jacob Epstein’s proud male nude ‘Liverpool Resurgent’ aka ‘Nobby’ or ‘Dickie Lewis’, that I wrote about in 2018, seem like a flash in the pan.

In terms of discrete female nude equivalents, one of wonderful Copenhagen’s most iconic tourist attractions is of course the exquisite sculpture of ‘Den Lille Havfrue’ (‘The Little Mermaid’). She was famously inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale of the same name from 1836. Hers is a story told of a young mermaid sacrificing her undersea world to be united with her handsome prince on land. A gift in 1913 from Danish brewer Carl Jacobsen to the City, the bronze was sculpted by Edvard Erichsen to sit upon a granite boulder pile set by the waters edge at Langelinie Pier. The model for sculpture is often reported as one Ellen Price, prima ballerina of Royal Danish Ballet, who in 1909 danced the lead role in The Little Mermaid ballet at the Royal Theatre. However, others say only Price’s face was used as Erichsen’s inspiration here, whilst it was actually his wife that posed as muse for his nude figure.

But heated debate has erupted in Denmark recently over another newer, larger mermaid statue by Peter Bech. This follows criticism of it by many, including art critic Mathias Kruger, who described the work as being “ugly and pornographic”. It is said the Danish agency for palaces and culture is to now remove ‘Den Store Havfrue’ (‘The Big Mermaid’) from Dragør Fort, part of Copenhagen’s former sea fortifications, because it is not deemed of the same high quality of cultural heritage as the more innocent 1913 original. But for whatever reason, the new sculpture had actually been installed near Langelinie Pier in 2006 first, but was then relocated to Dragør Fort following an earlier public outcry in 2018.

The main issue to many seems to be the debate around the anatomically correct but larger proportions of the newer Mermaid’s breasts. Others have said such puritan criticism reflects societal attitudes to women’s bodies more generally, with scrutiny of their sculpted form, tantamount to body shaming.

Figuratively Speaking, a similar public furore in England surrounded Marc Quinn’s beautifully sculpted classical marble ‘Alison Lapper Pregnant’, temporarily installed as part of the ‘Fourth Plinth Project’ on Trafalgar Square in 2004. But here, the public-voiced controversy was not that his oversized sculpture of artist Lapper was to be seen nude on a highly public plinth, but more that someone disabled like her, born without arms and with shortened legs, would proudly pose nude for all to see, as both Thalidomide survivor and heavily pregnant with her late son Parys. All of this didn’t matter ultimately, because in the end, the sculpture was rightly accepted as a challenging but sublime work – and lauded for empowering and exploring progressive social values on disability and art.

Clearly such subjects remain highly divisive in our supposedly more informed ‘modern society’, but that is nothing new: Classiscist and broadcaster Mary Beard once controversially announced to her audience in the Radio Times that the nude in art was always in danger of being “soft porn for the elite”. Later, in her provocative two-part TV essay, ‘Mary Beard’s Shock of the Nude’ she also confirmed “There are an awful lot of naked bodies in western art, and they are often causing trouble even now.”

Beauty or offence from art remains in the eye of the beholder, but the vision and integrity of an artist should at least be respected, even if their work is seen as poor or culturally challenging for whatever reason – and so, inappropriate for public siting. Bech’s sculpture is arguably not great art, but surely we need to be more mature and open-minded about public nudity in sculpture. It is perhaps ironic that this latest debate has emerged from Scandinavia and the usually far less prudish Danes. Hans Christian Anderson famously had written “mermaids have no tears, and therefore they suffer more” – but the current suffering of his “daughters of the air” are far beyond these innocent imaginations.

Rather superficially in the end, my mind wanders to the fictitious artistic self-denial and conceit of Tony Hancock’s downtrodden office worker and frustrated artist in his 1961 comedy ‘The Rebel’. Representing “women as I see them”, in the film he carves his “voluptuous Jezebel”, a monstrous concrete monolith, he pompously titles: ‘Aphrodite at the Waterhole’. Perpetually deluded, and seeing himself as the archetypal misunderstood, maligned artist, in finally addressing a crowd of unimpressed Parisian art critics, he dismisses them by shouting: “You’re all raving mad. None of you know what you’re looking at”!

Many a true word, spoken in jest?