When I think about public sculpture in Singapore, what strikes me is an image of modernism rendered as impotent phallicism. Let me qualify this statement: I am not thinking of the sculptural adornments on religious and colonial architecture, but a more limited field- the free-standing objects one finds in the central business district and downtown shopping areas, the urban parks and airport. A prevailing presumption behind far too much of this public art is that it should aspire to monumentality, but such attempts are largely unconvincing. It is not that there are only incompetent public works in Singapore. There is, for instance, a mother and child sculpture by Henry Moore tucked beside the headquarters of the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation. So, we all know that corporate Singapore can acquire the icons, the monuments, of Western art history, but what has been omitted from the equation is the modernist mode of art appreciation. It is as if the cramped-up Moore is left begging for more surrounding space than was allotted, for it cannot quite deliver the 'prescribed' modernist experience, in which the premium is on awe and contemplation, the contrast of material presence against emptiness. One can question the appropriateness of modernism's aesthetics and ideology in Singapore - regardless of historical period, let alone a Singapore imagined as postmodern - but to purchase modernism's premises and then ignore its logic does not give it a chance even to defend itself.
Other acquired monuments which are publicly displayed include a rotund bird by Fernando Botero and a surreal Newton by Salvador Dali, both in the plaza of the United Overseas Bank headquarters; a series of Roy Lichtensteins at the Suntec City expo, shopping... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline