The Prompt

YOU have to beware of Dionysean acts, for what they appear to promise as gifts are always of merely fleeting worth and interest. It's an age old illusion, but a heady and alluring one all the same. So when a Midas touch is given to a 'cultural icon', in the form of model Kate Moss, I find myself hoping that the superficial nature of it all isn't lost on the British public as they are blinded by the golden wonder.

We can only assume that British sculptor Marc Quinn was under some mythological trance when he decided that in such close succession to his pertinent and beautifully executed sculpture of Alison Lapper on a plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, he would cast Moss, in a yoga position non-yogic types will have last been confronted with only when the contortionist came into the circus ring, in pure gold.

Quinn's creation, which was unveiled last week as part of the Statuephilia exhibition at the British Museum, and said to be worth £1.5m with a potential sale value of £10m, is an embodiment of so much that is wonky with culture today. I find Quinn's art stimulating and worthwhile, and have no problem with casts of heads filled with blood or any of his so-called 'controversial pieces', but there is a controversy in this Moss sculpture which I fear may be lost on some. Not because people are ignorant, but because the whole Moss myth has bedazzled the British public for so long.

The fact that a far-too-skinny freckled girl from Croydon encapsulated an age of British cultural highs was almost excusable in the Nineties, as even our former Prime Minister was mesmerised by the allure of Cool Britannia. But Moss no longer represents a positive (and by that I don't mean puritan) face of what is enviable about British culture, does she?

Quinn explains his work by arguing that the sculpture "is about the abstractions that rule our lives, the desire for money, immortality, for beauty. It is a cultural hallucination we have all agreed to create".

How true. So why further fuel the idea that Moss is a figure worth giving such exalted status by solidifying her?

My ire, and perhaps Quinn's comments, are more directed at consumers than Moss herself. She's a private individual who has been elevated and deconstructed for public approval without playing a particularly vocal part in the process. She has worn the clothes, put on the lippy, taken the money. So is casting a model with a cocaine lifestyle in gold a reflection of the wrong she represents as an individual or the infatuation with vacuous symbols which we seem to find so irresistible, one wonders.

If it really is an artwork worth more than its weight in gold, let's melt her down and create some true meaning out of her existence. That she is utterly transient.

OUR WRITERS' WEEK

FIONA LEITH
ARTS EDITOR

Discarding the dross of the new James Morrison album, and the disappointing new offering from Ray LaMontagne, the album to tempt me into a second listen last week was Ladyhawke's eponymous debut. The New Zealand popstrel ditches any affected kookiness for bright, heavily Eighties-influenced, pure pop gusto, and it's infectious. In memory of the great American writer, David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide earlier this month, I completed his collection Consider The Lobster. His unique style and intellect is an inspiring legacy.

SIOBHAN SYNNOT
FILM CRITIC

I've dodged Meet Glen Campbell for a while simply because it seemed a coldly calculated effort to sell Campbell to a young audience; after Rick Rubin restored Johnny Cash to his deserved stature and Jack White introduced Loretta Lynn to a fresh audience. And at times the producers appear to be under the impression that they are producing a comeback for Roy Orbison, rather than Campbell. It's pleasant, but I'm enjoying much more the Vampire Weekend's cheerful, afro-inflected album. Highly recommended for the hungover.

STUART KELLY
LITERARY WRITER

Alice Francis's People's Palace Cinema in Wigtown. Showing early silent movies, it manages to recapture some of the magic of the film. Apart from a Laurel and Hardy – is it just me or are they actually quite creepy? – it was a wonderful bill, featuring Czech stop-frame animation that makes Toy Story look mundane. There's a great rampaging monkey reel – a guy in a suit, but with great reverse filming for his leaps and stunts, and fake "Japanese acrobatics", where the performers are actually lying flat, so their gravity-defying contortions seem almost believable.