Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn owes his place in the debut issue of Finch’s Quarterly Review to three particular qualities, beyond his great talent and provocative work (of which the above, Gulf Stream Conveyor, kindly donated to the magazine, is a splendidly fruity example). These three qualities are as follows:

First, he is a man of considerable charm and charisma.

Second, he dresses well and chews with his mouth closed, thus possessing and displaying manners rare in the arts.

Third, he has sculpted Kate Moss in a naked pose, and for this alone he is forever in our good books.

Marc is a powerful voice in contemporary British sculpture, and naturally a great deal of ink has been spilt over the meaning of his work. “A preoccupation with the mutability of the body and the dualisms that define human life: spiritual and physical, surface and depth, cerebral and sexual…” I’ll leave it for the art historians to haggle about that. Certainly there is no doubt that he has a talent for creating memorable, often shocking, often beautiful images and forms—and for raising hackles. His signature piece is a bust made from eight pints of his own frozen blood. But even that was overshadowed by his extraordinary sculpture of a pregnant woman without arms or fully grown legs, which for a while occupied the empty plinth of Trafalgar Square. Nobody who saw it could fail to have an opinion about it, or about the man who made it. Which, come to think of it, is a fourth quality that I admire in Marc, and yet another good reason to include him in our first number. 

 —Charles Finch

Would you like to comment on this article?

You must be logged in to post a comment.