ABOVE: Detail from Ian Walters’ statue of Nelson Mandela, which London Mayor Ken Livingstone is fighting to install in Trafalgar Square.

It’s been an acrimonious month in Europe, what with the scrap between the Paris billionaires, and Charles Saatchi telling his landlord to shove it, and a Renoir heir getting dragged into court, and the Tate kiboshing a perfectly harmless religion-tinged sculpture. We are here today, the last weekday of September, to round out the list with a nasty little scuffle among London Mayor Ken Livingstone, Royal College of Art sculpture professor Glynn Williams, and sculptor Ian Walters over a statue of Nelson Mandela which Livingstone is determined to put in Trafalgar Square.

Walters has made a nine-foot tall depiction of Mandela which Prof. Williams says is “an adequate portrait but nothing more…run-of-the mill mediocre modelling.” Williams, of course, isn’t exactly impartial: he made a statue of British Prime Minsister Harold Wilson which was rejected for placement outside the PM’s birthplace—and rival Walters’ statue was chosen instead. Yesterday, Livingstone referred (during a planning meeting over the placement of the new Mandela statue) to Prof. Williams’ Wilson statue as “a large dog mess.” The mayor continued: “It is all very well for people with fine arts degrees, but for ordinary people like myself we want a statue to look like the person.” What a month it’s been.

LINK: Telegraph > Mandela statue provokes another battle of Trafalgar
LINK: Guardian > Art attack - mayor and sculptor in war of words over Mandela statue