A new statue of David Bowie was defaced within 48 hours of its unveiling this week, with Billboard reporting that Andrew Sinclair’s “Earthly Messenger”—which depicts a number of the rock legend’s various personas, all sort of mashed together into a collage of Bowie—has been vandalized at its location in a public square in Aylesbury, England.
As far as the grand pantheon of possibly ill-advised bronze statues of celebrities goes, Sinclair’s work gets credit for being remarkably decent-looking; at the very least, you can look at it and go, “Hey, David Bowie,” and not, “Why did someone make a bronze statue out of a slowly melting wax sculpture of Lucille Ball?” Its expense and placement still appear to have angered some contingent of the musician’s spraypaint-armed fans though, who made sure to give credit to the man himself—courtesy of a “R.I.P. DB” tag—while questioning its cost with a scrawled “Feed the homeless first.”
Aylesbury commissioned the statue because the town was one of the first places where Bowie performed; there are rumors that the town’s famous Friars’ Club was the first place the world every got a glimpse of Ziggy Stardust. The town’s council has pledged to keep cleaning up the mess whenever this happens, truly capturing the “We vote to invest in a power washer” essence of Bowie’s rebellious spirit.