For this assignment, Audriana and I chose to visit Ryan Gander’s The Happy Prince. Gander’s sculpture is based on a short children’s story by Oscar Wilde also titled The Happy Prince. The story tells of a statue of a Prince, gilded with gold and adorned with jewels, who stands on top of a column and sees the daily sadness of his city’s poor. One day the Prince befriends a swallow, whom he asks to take the gold and jewels from his body and give to the people, alleviating their suffering. At the beginning of winter, the swallow dies at the Prince’s feet and the Prince, who is no longer grandly decorated, is destroyed by the Town Councillors. Wilde’s story ends with God asking an angel to return to him “the two most precious things in the city,” which come to be the Prince’s indestructible heart and the body of the swallow.
The sculpture is located on 60th Street and 5th Avenue, in Central Park. While the both of us observed the sculpture, we noticed that there were many children climbing on top of it. The piece was more like a playground, than a work of art. We did see a bride in her wedding gown taking a picture with her husband on the sculpture. Even though most people did not seem to notice the beauty of the piece, the newlywed couple did and took a picture near it.
In the video, Cynthia Perez explains to us why this sculpture is a piece of art and whether the appreciation of the piece is lost due to its location.
Nice post