Brandi Chastain is happy to have been inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. The retired U.S. Women’s Soccer star has certainly earned her place there, after kicking the game-winning goal for the 1999 Women’s World Cup and being on the winning team in 1991 as well.
She’s even happy with the plaque that commemorates her position in the Hall of Fame. Per the L.A. Times:
Chastain was cool about the whole thing. “It’s not the most flattering,” she told the San Jose Mercury News of the image. “But it’s nice.”
The Sporting News disagreed:
This Brandi Chastain plaque is bad. Really bad. https://t.co/5fcX6sVxFj pic.twitter.com/lOY8Npo1CR
— Sporting News (@sportingnews) May 22, 2018
Let’s be honest. Art is difficult. People who seem to casually render perfect images of people, animals and objects are typically demonstrating years of practice, and recreating an image in three dimensions is particularly problematic.
That’s why I’m not going to criticize the artist who created the piece before getting more information. I don’t know what limitations of time and source material they were working under, I don’t know what other issues may have been in the front of their minds.
But not criticizing the artist doesn’t mean I don’t agree with the Sporting News on this one. Completely apart from the artist, the art itself is bad. Someone at Arby’s decided to make a bit of an unfair comparison by rendering a portrait in a different medium… sauce:
Arby's creates Brandi Chastain portrait out of sauce as response to bad plaque https://t.co/ngHnzoH0ga
— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 24, 2018
But this isn’t the first bad sculpture for soccer stars. Last year, Cristiano Ronaldo had an airport renamed for him in his home of the Madeira Islands, and during the celebration ceremony his bust was revealed. The reaction was less than positive. In fact, it was overwhelmingly negative, and deservedly so. The artist for that bust then demonstrated that artists can have bad days and good, by producing a replacement:
Infamous Ronaldo bust artist gets a do-over: It was a bust which caused online ridicule, but is redemption now at hand for the creator of the infamous Cristiano Ronaldo bust? Our partners at Bleacher Report have been taking a deeper dive. https://t.co/DreAuIX9mT pic.twitter.com/Kt0etb1qHs
— La Paz BCS Mexico (@La_Paz_BCS) May 23, 2018
And of course the comparisons were made to one of America’s most famous examples of bad statuary, the “scary Lucy” Lucille Ball statue from her home town of Celoron, New York.
Did they get the same person that did the original Lucille Ball statue? pic.twitter.com/7fFRZJ5Q2D
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) May 23, 2018
But all of these examples of questionable sculpture may have an ulterior motive. It may be that they’re being designed as visually unappealing specifically to ensure they remain free of the devotions of objectum-sexuals like Amanda Whittaker. (Daily Mail)
It’s a strange, and sometimes ugly, world, folks.
Question of the night: What are some of your favorite art pieces?
