Focus on this artwork and explore the Impact and significance.
In a May 2001 article in the Irish edition of The Sunday Times Mark Keenan commented on the surprisingly long wait for a commemoration of Wilde in his native city and suggested an explanation for the delay, "... a decade ago, more conservative elements among the Dublin public may not have dared allow his city to commemorate his name." Art historian Paula Murphy agreed, saying, "It has taken nearly one hundred years for an Irish body, public or private, to risk suggesting that we might consider Oscar Wilde worthy of such commemoration. But then it has taken the same length of time for Ireland to awaken, reluctantly, to the existence of sexuality and the reality of the way in which it dictates a lifestyle." It took as long for London, where Wilde spent most of his adult life, to commemorate the dramatist: Maggi Hambling's A Conversation with Oscar Wilde was unveiled in 1998.Discussing the work in her 2012 article "Sculpting Irishness: a discussion of Dublin's commemorative statues of Oscar Wilde and Phil Lynott" for Sculpture Journal, Sarah Smith writes:Another distinction is the figure's facial expression, which, disrupting the realism of the figure, might be described as a rather contorted sneer. Intended by the artist to represent two antithetical sides of Wilde, one half of his face is smiling widely ... while the other bears a sombre expression ... and this divide is echoed in his posture on either side. Because of its positioning at the corner of the park on the turn of the outer pathway, the visitor to the monument sees one side of Wilde when approaching and another when walking away. One is the witty Wilde who is most often remembered in popular culture, the other the "broken man" he became following his two-year incarceration for committing homosexual acts.Smith argues "we cannot help but read this work according to today's conventions of dress and gesture", saying:The choice of pose for Wilde, which invokes familiar art historical and popular images of 'feminized masculinity', the use of colour for this 'colourful character' and his gaze directed at the nude male torso all coalesce with our knowledge of his homosexuality. We consequently see an overemphasis on his sexuality in this work, augmented by the nicknames given to it by Dubliners.
The Sunday Times Oscar Wilde Dublin A Conversation with Oscar Wilde Maggi Hambling