Sculpture in a Time Capsule
Photographs by the author
I walk into the interior of a steel tower, stop to look at the sky through an open pentagonal space at the top of it, and step out into the light again.
Fulcrum by Richard Serra
The tower — Richard Serra’s Fulcrum — is the star piece in a permanent collection of international late-20th century sculpture in the open spaces of Broadgate, beside London’s Liverpool Street Station and the closest thing London has to a sculpture park.
The sculptures, along with other artworks — 18 in all — were bought or commissioned, mainly in the late 1980s, by the developers Rosehaugh Stanhope at a cost of more than £3.5 million. The Broadgate Development was a pet project of Margaret Thatcher, who as Prime Minister operated a crane to lay the first blocks in 1985, on the site of the former Broad Street Station and goods yards. (Can’t you just see her in her hard hat?) When the work was completed, Lehman Brothers would set up their headquarters at No 1.
Fulcrum is huge. At around 17 metres high, it’s made up of five sheets of steel spot-welded together, which appear to be balanced against one another, making a wigwam-like structure with three entrances into its interior. The steel is ‘Cor-ten’, a material much used by Serra, which weatherproofs itself with a rust-coloured and textured coating.
After Serra’s later, curved steel sculptures for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the art historian Robert Hughes called him, ‘not only the best sculptor alive, but the only great one at work anywhere in the early 21st century.’
Serra has said that his work has no subject — that the viewers become its subject when they enter and interact with it. But some stains on the paving at one of the entrances to Fulcrum confirm its widely reported use as a pissoir. Serra is reported to have been unhappy when he saw some boys resting their feet on one of his works in a Paris park; I wonder if he knows about this interaction.
Also designed to be walked through is Lincoln Seligman’s Alchemy — interior design rather than artwork. Overhead beams along a 75-metre passageway have been painted in a spectrum of textured metallic colour representing base metal turning to gold. According to the official Broadgate Art Guide, ‘(Seligman) sees this work as an exploration of the theme of alchemy, appropriate to the hopes of the City’. The colours run from lead to gold in the centre of the passageway and then reverse back to lead.
Leaping Hare on Crescent and Bell by Barry Flanagan
Barry Flanagan’s Leaping Hare on Crescent and Bell, in the south-east corner of the Broadgate Circle, makes me smile. The hare appears to be leaping away from the buildings towards green space. The crescent and the bell are like good-luck charms from a bracelet, scaled up and cast in bronze.
Rush Hour by George Segal
Rush Hour by George Segal is a closely-spaced group of six bronze figures, cast from live models, initially in Segal’s trademark plaster. Like many people, I used to think that these figures with their expressionless faces represented a dismissive attitude to the real office workers who pass by them. But their persistence has won me over. Here they still are, in Finsbury Avenue Square, almost heroic in their wet-looking raincoats.
Other groups of figures on the perimeter of the complex include The Broad Family by Xavier Corberó in Exchange Square: mother, father, child and dog — carved in basalt and roughly textured apart from the child’s detailed lace-up shoes. The family members stand spaced well apart from one another and don’t look at home at the foot of the steps from the street.
Ganapathi and Devi by Stephen Cox
Even further apart, balancing one another, are the two beautiful Indian granite torsos Ganapathi and Devi, by Stephen Cox, sited under trees on the Sun Street roundabout at the eastern boundary of Broadgate. They represent Ganesh, the elephant god, and Devi, the essential Hindu goddess. Here a security guard tells me not to take photographs, and I remember that — although technically the open space at Broadgate is partly public and partly private — I am in corporate space on sufferance and under surveillance.
Broadgate Venus by Fernando Botero and Waterfeature by Stephen Cox
In Exchange Square I watch a second security guard evict a man attempting to paddle in a pool inspired by a Japanese temple garden, with a cascade of water — Stephen Cox’s Water Feature. This is in the most popular open space in the development, and Fernando Botero’s Broadgate Venus, an enormous, reassuring figure in polished bronze, reclines near the water. Seeing several couples posing for photographs in front of her, I think that Cupid must also be there in spirit.
Eye-I by Bruce McLean
Out on the street in Bishopsgate is Bruce Davidson’s Eye-I, the most highly visible of the sculptures.Constructed of multi-coloured and brightly painted steel strips, it has the graphic quality of a French poster from the 1930s.
The collection is tucked away, but it’s not hard to find. Most of the work is labelled, though there are no signposts to the area and nothing to inform people about the artworks apart from a downloadable guide (see below). One visitor tells me, ‘I like some of it but I don’t know what it is or why it’s there.’
The presence of sculpture was an integral part of the Broadgate Development from its planning stage onwards, and an important element in its popularity with architects and the public; but it receives little publicity and no new sculptures have been added for many years.
It’s worth a visit. This kind of project is unlikely to be repeated. It dates from a time when capitalism, at the height of its confidence, did its best to present us with an acceptable face.
The Broadgate Art Guide
© 2011
Salt Publishing Limited