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How the Brick Man bit the dust
Twenty years ago Leeds was poised to have its very own equivalent of the Angel of the North – but the scheme was scuppered. The YEP looks back at the reasons why...
IN 1988 Leeds councillors took a decision which deprived the city of (or saved it from, depending on your point of view) a unique landmark – the Brick Man.
Standing 120ft tall, the impressive sculpture was due to be built on Holbeck Triangle, unused scrubland near Leeds city station, which the council had long earmarked for a sculpture park.
Despite having some plaudits, the project by artist Anthony Gormley, the man behind the infamous Angel of the North, was never built.
His most famous sculpture celebrated its 10th anniversary on February 16 – it is perhaps a moot point whether the decision not to allow Gormley's brick work in Leeds put the city on a sound footing, or left it a few bricks short of a proverbial wall.
Your very own Yorkshire Evening Post even campaigned against the 600,000 project after a phone poll revealed 800 people for it but more than 2,000 against it.
Then Councillor Richard Hughes-Rowlands said it reminded him of King Kong, adding: "If Mr Gormley is talking about it going elsewhere my eyes won't exactly be weeping tears."
Gormley had threatened to pull the plug on the Leeds scheme because his planning application suffered a seven-month delay.
Then Leeds City Council leader Coun George Mudie said of the YEP poll: "I am delighted but not surprised with the formidable common sense of the Leeds public. The result demonstrated the scheme should not go ahead."
He added: "Their common sense contrasts sharply with the airy-fairy views of celebrities who don't live within 100 miles of the city."
The Leeds Brick Man would have been the largest sculpture in the UK. Eyesore or not, it would have been a draw for curious tourists and a must-see for locals.
Edifying
The sculpture was to be hollow inside, with a door at one heel and two tiny windows where the ears were, so people would be able to wander in and peer up into the empty gloom. Like entering the quietest of churches, it might have been an edifying experience.
It would have created an unusual oasis of calm in a city increasingly obsessed with work and perhaps that would have been the point – Gormley's brick man would represent the immovable, the static – like the Sphinx in Egypt, a looming reminder of times past.
But the only reminder of Gormley's imagined obelisk stands just 6ft tall in Leeds Art Gallery in the form of a scale replica, which, according to museum staff, is very popular.
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Weather for Leeds
Saturday 26 May 2012
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