Domestikator, a 12-metre-high, 30-tonne rust-red work by the Dutch sculptor Joep van Lieshout, has just been installed in Paris’s prime spot for modern sculpture: the esplanade of the Pompidou Centre modern art museum. But it was only given refuge there after being rejected by the more genteel Louvre museum as too sexual in the city’s latest sculpture spat. “I was surprised first of all, and then of course disappointed, because [the Louvre Museum] couldn’t show the art work,” he told Reuters. But Paris is fertile ground not just for seeing racy connotations in modern sculpture, but also for vandalism against outdoor works deemed controversial. At the time Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said the incident was an unacceptable attack on artistic freedom.

Source: The Guardian October 18, 2017 15:22 UTC