It was supposed to be a tribute to Sinead O'Connor , but the wax statue in her memory turned into a "shock" for the singer's brother and for the thousands of fans of the tormented Irish music legend who died last July 26 in her London residence, aged 56.
The National Wax Museum in Dublin had to withdraw it with the promise that it will be replaced with a "more accurate representation". Created by the artist PJ Heraghty, the wax replica was commissioned by the museum owner, Paddy Dunning, a friend of the musician, and is inspired by the famous video for "Nothing Compares 2 U", the song written by Prince which in 1990 made Sinead famous all over the planet.
As soon as it was presented, however, the work was overwhelmed by criticism. The harshest ones came from the singer's brother, John O'Connor: a "horrible, inappropriate, halfway between a mannequin and something out of Thunderbirds" statue, a British science fiction TV series, which "doesn't look like her at all", he said on the Liveline radio program, broadcast by the Irish public broadcaster Rté.
A judgment shared by many fans who, even on social media, have defined the work as "tremendously ugly", and by the journalist Hugh Linehan, who in the Irish Times underlined how the statue does not recall "at all the furious, impetuous and evanescent from 1990 that it should represent", but rather "an abandoned mannequin from an East German shopping centre".
In the end , the Dublin museum issued a mea culpa, recognizing that the statue "does not reflect the high standards or expectations of Sinead's fans" and added that it is already working to create a new wax work "that better reflects her true spirit and its iconic image."
(Unioneonline/D)
