Nude woman statue set for S.F.’s Union Square loses footing

Yay! Plans to install a 45-foot-tall statue of a nude woman in San Francisco’s Union Square have been canceled. Make that double yay.

Organizers for the project told the San Francisco Chronicle of insurmountable problems with the installation. Whatever. The good news is that this colossus won’t rise, and we’re all saved from embarrassment.

The artist, Marco Cochrane, known for creating giant statues of disrobed women, explained why in a press release in 2016: “What I see missing in the world is an appreciation and respect for feminine energy and power that results when women are free and safe.”

Portraying stripped women and magnifying their state of undress in giant size, is an odd way to show “respect” for them. Cochrane’s reasoning sounds like an excuse to picture women without clothes.

And it’s not as if there are no statues of nude women in the world. But they usually are about something besides their body parts.

Consider Rodin’s “Andromeda,” a sculpture of a nude female crouched over a rock. This was based on the Greek myth about sacrificing a woman to a sea monster to save a kingdom.

While other artists have shown Andromeda in full frontal nudity as she’s chained to a rock awaiting her fate, Rodin’s nude is about a state of mind.

He chose to expose only Andromeda’s back as she bends over the rock, holding fast to protect herself from the impending attack. His focus was on her nervousness, not her nakedness.

Granted, Greek myths are full of damsels in distress. But artists to a man invariably choose to fixate on the damsels’ anatomy. Cephalus and Procris, and Lygia and the Bull come to mind.

Clearly, figurative art is about more than what a figure looks like. Rodin pays homage to the human condition. In fact, you might say that he made plaintiveness and poignancy his life’s work. And this includes the suffering of men as well as women.

Female artists are as guilty of dead-headed sculptures of women. I’m thinking of Maggi Hambling who sculpted an undressed statue of 18th century women’s rights pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft.

Reaction to Hambling sculpture from The Guardian art writer Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett sums up the objection to Hambling’s ridiculous rendition: “Would a man be 'honored' with his schlong out?"

Hambling’s explanation was as silly as her sculpture: Putting clothes on Wollstonecraft “would have fixed her to a time and place.”

With that kind of thinking, one may wonder why, say, Jean-Antoine Houdon didn’t sculpt his full-length statue of George Washington bare-skinned. After all, he’s from the same century as Wollstonecraft.

Look, I’m not saying that statues of our heroes in history can’t be nude. Michelangelo did it with “David.” But that nakedness had a purpose – to dramatize the boy’s vulnerability and courage as he faced the armored Goliath with only a stone in one hand and a slingshot in the other.

Cochrane needs to come up with a better reason than saying his statues of naked women are meant to show them respect.