Sculpture Victorious Review

Each age has its preoccupations, types of knowledge, and aesthetic standards. The art that is produced in each period a signification of what is valued or seen to be wonderful. Sculpture, apparently, was important for Victorians considering the amount of money poured into commissioning - there were more erections of public statues than any previous age.

Subtitled, “Art in the Age of Invention 1837-1901”, the exhibition is keen to detail how new materials were discovered and used in the setting and decorating of the items on display. New methods such as electro-plating, and the use of zinc instead of cooper are highlighted. Technological progress was important to Victorians as scientists, thinkers and politicians looked over at the the progress made across the channel in the thriving academic settings of Germany. The idealism of the time is apparent in the exhibition, however, and if judgement be made after viewing the Sculpture Victorious at the Tate, beauty was less of a concern.

Visitors to the exhibition are met by Alfred Gilbert's 1887 - 1889 giant marble bust of Queen Victoria. One would imagine that the queen pervaded every area of Victorian life, much like her presence is stamped across the this intimate - code for small - exhibition. There's a display of jewels and coins which fail to impress. Kitsch is a word that springs to mind.

Room 4 of the exhibition is all about the tech-savvy of Victorians. Raffaelle Monti's 1847 Veiled Vestal (as featured in the film Pride and Prejudice), perhaps encapsulates the force of the exhibition in trying to portray the technical progress of the artists of the era. Victorian audiences, it is said, were in disbelief that the veil that covered the face of the sitting virgin was anything but made of fabric. The statue is also breathtaking, setting it apart from most of the other of the items on display. 

The mild success of the exhibition is that is represents the hierarchy in Victorian society. Constantly toing and froing between the high ideals of the classics and the darker, more ornate medieval period, there is a sense of romanticism loosing its hope. The sublime versus the foe underneath, an encroachment of the macabre on purity and innocence. Chivalry is a theme, as per James Sherwood Westmacott's, Baron Saher de Quency, Earl of Winchester and other representations of knights either embalmed or fighting off serpents and other troublesome creatures.

Of course, the Victorian's were anything but innocent when it comes to slavery, or expropriation of land and property. Here's the controversy: this exhibition's title runs roughshod over memories and items of things that are better forgotten, let alone revered. The Tate's claim that this period was a “golden age of sculpture” is problematic from this point of view, and, actually, because most of the sculpture isn't that great. Unless, of course, organisers are trying to be ironic.

The intention of the exhibition is good however overall Sculpture Victorious is a missed opportunity as there hasn't been another attempt to bring together the sculpture of Victorian period in one place, and its not like there isn't plenty to choose from. It represents the Enlightenment ideal of the universal museum, without the depth, organisation, and concerted attention that you might find at, say, the British Museum. Its also disjointed. The Elephant by Thomas Longmore and John Henk, a depiction of an animal from the far corners of the then British Empire, for instance, is stuck in the middle of the exhibition as a centre piece of in-congruent proportions.

Sculpture Victorious is running at the Tate until 25 May 2015