Tuesday, 26 April 2011

Reasons to visit Watford: no.1 in an occasional series

Because they have the most homoerotic war memorial of any town, anywhere, ever.


That fig leaf just reinforces the focus of our attention, wouldn't you say?

PS: A reader has referred, in the Comments section of this post, to this sculpture in the ground of the Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge:


Alas, I have no idea how to add photos to Comments, so you get to see it here instead.

Mighty fine sculpture, I would have said. According to the web, the model was the younger brother of Lawrence of Arabia. That must have been some family.

PPS: Someone else has now nominated this delightful Washington DC statue, apparently the Boy Scout Memorial:


Thanks for the hot tips, but I'm not adding any more: they'll go in a new post if I like them.

4 comments:

Viollet said...

Lovely bronze!

That's the trouble with fig leaves and similar: they draw attention to what they are trying to conceal (not a big boy, this one, though - but you'd approve of that, no doubt).

Must go and see it. My current (and long-term) favourite male sculpture remains Laura Knight's bronze youth in Cambridge (in the grounds of the Scott Polar Institute - she was Scott's wife), start-naked youth in unselfconscious ecstatic pose, small willie, gorgeous buttocks, quite entrancing. Apparently he was an undergrad when he posed: I wonder whether you'd get any modern 20-y-o to do that?

LeDuc said...

Thanks very much indeed for the tip -- an image has been added as a PS to the main post. I have walked past the SP loads of times but never seen that statue: I must keep my eyes open!

Would any modern 20y.o. do that? Judging by the tsunami of exhibitionist porn on the web, I'd guess "yes"!

Brian Johnson said...

Nice. Of course there is always the Boy Scout Memorial in Washington DC that stirs much discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boy_Scout_Memorial-27527.jpg

Viollet said...

Thanks very much for the picture of the Scott Polar boy; though I'm afraid it hardly does him justice. I haven't got one (until now). My recollection is that the rather intrusive wall behind is actually quite a lot further away, which suggests compressed perspective through use of a long tele lens.

You need to see his back side, too!