heirs of the artist behind the Copenhagen landmark liitle mermaid want a similar statue torn down
Denmark Now Has Two Little Mermaids. The Famous One Is Suing.
The heirs of the artist behind the Copenhagen landmark want a similar statue torn down. And they want compensation, too.
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Edvard Eriksen’s “Little Mermaid” statue in Langelinie harbor, in Copenhagen. The sculpture was a gift to the city in 1913.Credit...Ole Jensen/Getty Images
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On a blustery day last week, Tina Pedersen and Jens Poulsen, two Danish vacationers, posed for pictures beside a statue of a mermaid. In some ways, the sculpture seemed familiar: Perched by a harbor, the mermaid rested the weight of her bare torso on one arm, and draped her piscine tail delicately over a rock. Yet Pedersen and Poulsen were not in Copenhagen; they were on their way to a beach vacation on the other side of Denmark.
“We heard on the radio that the estate of ‘The Little Mermaid’ was demanding that this one be destroyed,” said Pedersen. “So we thought we better come see it while we still could.”
The mermaid that has watched over the harbor in the village of Asaa, in the north of Denmark, since 2016 is not an exact replica of the landmark in Denmark’s capital. But for the heirs of Edvard Eriksen, the artist who sculpted the Copenhagen statue, the Asaa mermaid bears too close a resemblance. They have initiated legal proceedings, demanding not just financial compensation, but that the sculpture in Asaa be torn down as well.
“When I first received the email, I laughed,” said Mikael Klitgaard, the mayor of Broenderslev, the municipality that includes Asaa. “I thought it was a joke.”
But the Eriksen estate is not fooling around. It has a long history of zealously protecting its licensing rights to the image of the sculpture, which represents a character from a Hans Christian Andersen story. Reached by phone, Alice Eriksen, the artist’s granddaughter and overseer of the estate, declined to comment. “The case is ongoing,” she said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/arts/design/little-mermaid-denmark-dispute.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=Art%20and%20Design
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