Asian Public Art News: Not so delightful "Turkish delight"

Public sculpture of the nude remains a crucial genre for Western public art. And there is still room to innovate this ancient form, as per Antony Gormley or Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in London's Traflagar Square.

But I'm not sure that Olaf Metzel's work can claim to be in the same category. His life sized sculpture (left), displayed in the project space of the Kunsthalle Wien, near the Succession in Vienna Austria, portrays a slouching female nude, wearing only a headscarf. To me, the directness of Mentzel's giving a female nude figure a headscarf, and its crude title, "Turkish Delight", moves it from art to polemic, aimed squarely at the Muslim community of Austria. And there should be little surprise that the work has been vandalized twice.

Gerald Matt, Director of the Kunsthalle, has announced "deep respect" for differences in aesthetic opinion and religious feeling, and according to ArtForum "has said that such debates should not occur through violent means". But I am not sure that the public vandalism of a work which is purposely offensive really qualifies as violence. I'm afraid I'm with the vandals on this one. But they could have chosen a more positive way of making their feelings know, as indeed unnamed art activists did when they dressed Copenhagen's Little Mermaid in a burqa.