Vandals have sprayed yellow paint on a controversial sculpture known as the ‘Queen’s vagina’ which has just been displayed in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles in France.
“Damage to the work, Dirty Corner, was discovered on Wednesday morning,” said the estate’s management. “It was lightly sprayed with paint. The job is being cleaned up.
The 60 meter long and 10 meter high abstract steel and rock sculpture by British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor resembles a funnel. It faces the royal castle which attracts five million tourists a year.
Inside the palace itself is a smaller work: a cannon that fires red wax at white walls, symbolizing a phallus and ejaculation of blood.
Some French media expressed unease at the level of provocation unleashed by Kapoor, who described the piece as “the vagina of a queen taking power”.
Kapoor – who did not say which queen he had in mind when he created the piece – admitted the work was “ambitious”, but said it was not as over the top as the scale of the piece. opulent Versailles.
He later seemed to stray from his description of the job as “the queen’s vagina”, but said he didn’t see why it was problematic. “It’s about creating a dialogue between these great gardens and the sculptures,” he told reporters on June 5.
No one has claimed responsibility for the vandalism of the sculpture, and no complaints have been filed.
In a statement, local ruling Socialist Party officials expressed “outrage” at the vandalism, which they called an attack on freedom of expression. It was “unacceptable that art, the compass of freedom, should suffer because of the obscurantism of some”, they declared.
Kapoor’s exhibition is one of the most controversial at Versailles since authorities opened the palace and its grounds to contemporary artists in 2008.
That year, Versailles hosted works by American artist Jeff Koons and in 2010 by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
In October 2014, vandals in the famous Place Vendôme in Paris deflated a massive sculpture by American artist Paul McCarthy that was shaped like a sex toy. McCarthy then decided to take down the work, which both outraged and tickled the Parisians.
