Daily Appreciation
It’s called Siren, because in a sense it represents everything that lures people to wreck themselves on the rocks: money, perfection, unattainable images — all these things.”
The artist cited in, ‘Siren: Will Self in interview with Marc Quinn’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, British Museum, Siren, 2008–2009, p. 20
Marc Quinn Biography
The epitome of luxury and desirability, Marc Quinn’s 18 carat gold sculpture Microcosmos (SIREN) is the spectacular apex of the artist’s output: the definitive contemporary Venus. Executed in 2008, the iconic subject of the world’s most famous supermodel struck in the ultimate material of prosperity and affluence, this work is in the highest tier of the artist’s prestigious oeuvre and one of the most consciously iconic sculptures of this century.
A hermetically sealed and self-completing Gordian Knot of female corporeality, the body contorted into a Möbius loop of collective desire, Microcosmos (SIREN) constitutes the very quintessence of Quinn’s dialectic concern with identity, human embodiment and representation. Quinn’s twisted bodily distortion of the most venerated female visage of our epoch posits Moss’s golden effigy as a chimera of singular allure. Steeped in art-historical allusions and cultural referents, this work is enmeshed in a broad dialogue that looks to deconstruct the beau ideal, scrutinising the binary dissonance between perfect and imperfect, sacred and profane, transience and permanence. There is terrific formal harmony and lyrical balance in the circular twisting of limbs and curvature of the spine extrapolated from a Yoga position. By conflating Moss’ ethereally bewitching facial features her contorted body, Microcosmos (SIREN) compounds the notion of Kate Moss as a two-dimensional illusion that, in the words of Germaine Greer, “exists to be manipulated” (Germaine Greer, ‘Siren’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, British Museum, Siren, 2008–2009, p. 6).
An immensely powerful belief-system in contemporary society, the cult of celebrity was most famously first identified by Andy Warhol as inhabiting a similar if not equivalent position to that of a religion within popular culture. Warhol’s Gold Marilyn Monroe from 1962 now housed in the Museum of Modern Art transformed the ubiquitous visage of Monroe into an undeniable object of veneration directly reminiscent of Christian Byzantine icon paintings. Similarly enshrined in gold, Quinn’s Microcosmos (SIREN) stands as twenty-first century’s successor to Warhol’s masterpiece. Akin to Warhol’s constant recycling of Marilyn’s likeness, Kate Moss has become a near-obsessional subject within Quinn’s work since 2000, when he created a life-sized sculpture of Moss for a Vogue photo-shoot which was thereafter transformed into an ice sculpture for the 2002 Rapture exhibition at the Barbican Centre. Indeed, idolatry underlies Quinn’s evocation of Moss: as the artist has declared, “I was looking for a current incarnation of the Venus/ Aphrodite archetype”, an “effective mirror for ourselves — our desires, our obsessions our dreams” (the artist cited in: Ibid., p.18).
Exalted to the status of contemporary goddess, Microcosmos (SIREN) recalls the sculpture of antiquity while her golden materiality and contorted yoga-like pose locate her within the context of votive sculptures from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Surrounded by such classical ideals and ancient monuments on the occasion of Siren’s exhibition at the British Museum in 2008, Quinn’s sculpture reflects a post-modern appropriation of their component parts. At once the harmonious proportions reflect the contemplation of classical statuary while the jewel-like quality and placid detachment evokes the funerary mask of Tutankhamun.
Quinn deconstructs and canonizes the notion of Moss as a contemporary beacon of twenty-first century desire. Preserved within the eternal property of 18 carat gold, Quinn propels Moss into the realm of atemporality: heir to Warhol’s Marilyn, Microcosmos (SIREN) is a lustrous and paradoxical embodiment of the ever-lasting allure of celebrity. As elaborated by Quinn himself: “What’s interesting about Kate is there’s 50 billion image of her but there’s no single, iconic one. There can’t be — because she is legion, she is this mutable, continual transforming being. To permanently embody her would be like transforming that abstract image of god or a goddess into something tangible and physical… this may be the iconic image of her that lasts for a thousand years” (the artist cited in: ‘Siren: Will Self in interview with Marc Quinn’ in: Ibid., p. 23)
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