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The Little Mermaid never got her man, as least not until the Disney version came along. Now two top artists have created a male counterpart for Hans Christian Andersen's best-loved character - a sculpture that's a little too real for some. Mike Peters reports.

He sits on a rock, a gleaming figure of fantasy in polished stainless steel, in a harbor just up the coast from Copenhagen.

And just as the capital's Little Mermaid statue has become an international tourist attraction, the city fathers of Helsingoer, Denmark, hope its brand-new sculpture named "Han" will bring more visitors to the site of the castle of Kronborg, the setting Shakespeare re-created as "Elsinore" when he wrote Hamlet.

The young male figure crafted by sculptors Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset perches languidly on his own steel rock, watching ships parade through the Oeresund Strait on their way to the Little Mermaid.

Elmgreen and Dragset, well known for artistic mischief, have employed a hydraulic mechanism that makes the eyes of the sculpture close for a split second once every hour - just one blink - before the statue becomes static once more.

There had been plenty of reaction, even before the sculpture's public unveiling on June 2. Han is a little too real for some, even in traditionally liberal Copenhagen, because he's, well, naked.

The ensuing fuss was a bit of a surprise to Han's creators.

"Art history is full of sculptures depicting the naked male body. It's only recently that this seems to provoke a few moralists," Elmgreen tells China Daily.

"It is a classic trick to use nakedness in order to avoid a particular dress code on the sculpture that would appear totally out of fashion after some years," he says. "If our sculpture would sit there in Adidas sweat pants, there would be a fair chance that people wouldn't understand what he was wearing in a decade or so."

The artists say they also wanted to show a masculine image that is less heroic and "macho".

"He can be softer, more poetic and freer" Elmgreen says. "We believe that this new masculine role can feel threatening to some mainly more mature men who were brought up with a totally different self-image."

Some critics say that's highfalutin language for a salacious sculpture, which they find so homoerotic they can't imagine why Han might be gazing down the coast toward the legendary mermaid.

Other naysayers complain that 3 million Danish kroner ($516,300) would have been better spent on a piece of art that celebrates the city's long legacy of shipbuilding.

Controversy has also sometimes dogged the much-loved Little Mermaid, who attracted 5 million visitors when she was displayed at Shanghai's Expo 2010 and merited a personal look-see from China's President Hu Jintao when he recently visited Denmark.

Inspired by a character in Andersen's 1837 fairy tale and a tourist attraction since her unveiling in 1913, the Little Mermaid is a 175-kg statue by Edvard Eriksen.

In the 1960s, the statue was upended, decapitated twice and lost an arm. More recent protesters have covered her bowed head with a Muslim headscarf. An icon of innocence and love, she had also been painted red, pink and green and had a sex toy attached to her wrist.

"Han ('Him' in Danish) is a very different sculpture," says Elmgreen. Han has no fish tail. That means that he, unlike the mermaid, is not a symbol for unhappy love and not being able to reach your dreams."

The artist says he and Dragset aren't fretting over criticism of their work. "It's always great if an art work suddenly can trigger a wider debate in society and the whole public starts to show interest," Elmgreen says.

The public has certainly done that.

"We love the Little Mermaid because she is a classic," says Torben Andersen, no relation to the 19th-century storyteller, who joined the crowd to see the new statue. "But where's the substance - what's real about this 'Han' guy sitting out there on a rock?"

His wife, Signe, looks at him in mock astonishment.

"Sweetie," she says, "Do you think the Little Mermaid is real?"

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.