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Sunday, November 16, 2008
The Wall St Bull - great public art photo illustration by Ji Lee
This illustration by Ji Lee accompanies an article by Michael Lewis in Conde Nast's Portfolio. It's a fine illustration, messing with an iconic piece of art. And it allows me to connect this public art blog and the compulsive reading I've been doing on financial crisis and economic slowdown...Labels: USA
# posted @ 3:10 PM 0 comments | add a comment
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Knitting Graffiti
Am so loving the new possible angles of attack on the idea of "graffiti" - interventions in public space. Check out "knitting graffiti"...(thanks to Glenn Schloss for the reference - he points out that this recently received plenty of publicity in the US - more than many high profile big name commercial projects.# posted @ 2:19 PM 0 comments | add a comment
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Tilted Arc: the aftermath
This is about as good as I think writing about art gets in the daily papers: Richard Serra at MoMA: Towering sculptures in torqued steel. I'm linking to the IHT version, as it will stay free access longer, but you see better pix at the NYT version. Michael Kimmelman is saying that Tilted Arc is far behind us - that today's audiences can appreciate the lightness and warmth of these "awesome mazes of looming Cor-Ten steel":«That same vocabulary of curved, giant metal walls, once vilified as art-world arrogance, is now better understood and broadly admired. This is how radical art operates.In Mr. Serra’s case you can also call it democratic art because it sticks to pure form that requires no previous expertise to grasp. There’s no coy narrative, no insider joke or historical allusion or meta-art theme. There’s none of what Mr. Serra disdainfully calls, in the show’s catalog, “post-Pop Surrealism,” by which he lumps together all contemporary art that leans for a crutch on language and Duchamp. »I think on balance this is right, though I would put less emphasis on Serra's formal vocabulary than on attitudes of reception. Audiences are hungry for place-making, ready for serious and honest attempts to engage them, less likely to immediately escalate such attempts the zero-sum wars of identity politics...
(Well, obviously not all audiences in all contexts. Remember Russian war hero monuments in Estonia and, recently, reactions to Singapore's ersatz graffiti...)
Technorati Tags: public_artLabels: USA
# posted @ 12:09 PM 0 comments | add a comment
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Aesthetic Grounds blogs nusantara - and lots of other great public art sites
Glenn Weiss writes the blog Aesthetic Grounds on public art and public space, forming part of the ArtsJournal collective. This is in part to redress the balance: "the dialogue on public art and public space has almost no American art critics..." (Glenn are you saying Miwon Kwon is chopped liver?). He's put together a posting listing some of the public art websites out in the world, including nusantara.com.
Glenn has written public art grant proposals and knows some of the players in the US, so his blog is an excellent place to get an in-depth look at some ongoing public art commissions, and to get a feel for the meeting of architects, landscape artists and public sculptors and others in this process. He's writing some in-depth reviews of pieces, which is a great contribution.Labels: USA, web resources
# posted @ 11:55 AM 0 comments | add a comment
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Traffic stopper sculpture
From a Brooklyn neighborhood paper - a different kind of guerrilla art - a "traffic-stopper" piece of cinderblocks, put at a major intersection to slow traffic and further public protest at traffic hazards in a newly developed streetcorner. Visually the work is fairly well devoid of aesthetic merit, but as a work of communication and commitment, it works extremely well indeed. For details, read the story at The Brooklyn Paper: Roadblock slows down Red Hookers.
The work was removed by authorities after being in place 12 hours, but it made its point. Said one resident: "Traffic has become so bad here, and nobody pays attention. They wanted to see if anybody would even bother to take it away."Labels: USA
# posted @ 10:32 AM 0 comments | add a comment
Saturday, February 17, 2007
a touch of socialist realism for a new American national memorial
Public Art News has a bit of a weakness for sculptures of Dr Martin Luther King. As the campaign for the national memorial in Washington DC gains strength, more is being published in the US about the final design, including the commission of Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin to create one element - the realistic image of Dr King - of the overall memorial. (We pointed to a Xinhua news story on this in August 06). Judging from the maquette, the work has a distinct air of socialist realism to it. Something to do with the heroic volumes, the figure emerging from the stone. I find that quite satisfying somehow (and hasten to add that the US has its own tradition of social realist art...)
See the full story in the Washington Post here: Chinese Sculptor Picked to Carve Image For King Memorial - washingtonpost.comLabels: USA
# posted @ 8:43 PM 0 comments | add a comment
Sunday, January 21, 2007
If Bill Gates says it's cool...
Who are we to differ? A recent AP story did have to lead with this billionaire celebrity opinion on a public park, which seems kind of besides the point, right? I mean, what does Bill Gates need with a public park? He's a civic minded person, so that's nice, but in this case there were plenty of celebrities who actually donated works for the new Seattle Olympic Sculpture Park, including his famous ex-colleague Paul Allen. The sculpture garden features a Serra (as per this fine pix by Genjo), a Calder, Oldenburg, Bourgeois, etc. Not a "general-on-a-horse" among them, but it doesn't sound like there's too much that's too adventurous. But the Bourgeois is at least done in response to an interesting commission - a bequest from Stu Smailes that his $1 million be used to create a "realist nude male figure". See the article from The Associated Press. Or check out the Flickr pool. We posted on this park in Feb, and linked to the Park's website.Labels: sculpture park, USA
# posted @ 9:32 AM 0 comments | add a comment
Monday, January 01, 2007
Manhole Mandalas in New York
Some anonymous street artist is creating these manhole mandalas in Manhattan.
I like them because they are:Thanks, yet again, to the marvelous Wooster Collective for highlighting this.
- non destructive of public property
- biodegradable
- focus attention on the urban landscape
- remind me of Balinese offerings
Wooster Collective: Manhole Mandala
Technorati Tags: streetartLabels: USA
# posted @ 9:59 PM 0 comments | add a comment
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Electroland - these boys are on to something
Bringing together architectural deployment of LCDs with simple interactions (like the stuff James Seawright* did for the Seattle Airport in the early 1970s if you can remember that far back) Electroland has put together a series of very interesting projects, some realized, some not. And, surprise surprise, some of these projects work in advertising, like the Target-branded Rockefeller Center observation platform in NYC.
According to their website, the team has been selected to create a public art masterplan for Houston, Texas.
*for more on Seawright's Seattle airport and its fate, click here.Technorati Tags: ambient advertising, newyorkcity, public_art, airport art, Seattle, urban screens
# posted @ 10:47 AM 0 comments | add a comment
Sunday, October 22, 2006
"a certain Marie Antoinette-ish vibe"
is what the Nation says America's publicly funded art has, in times of public sector austerity. It's a nice-reading review of two new books, Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture by Michael Kammen and Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding by Tyler Cowen. The review spends a fair amount of time complaining about the authors being insufficiently-opinionated, but it is a nice read. I like its words on the Lincoln Memorial, quoting from Kammen's book:«Although the Lincoln Memorial--with its surprisingly recent dedication date of 1922--has settled into our collective data bank of patriotic images as a kind of mammoth, extra-reassuring department store Santa, a young Lewis Mumford fumed at the time that the monument exuded "not the living beauty of our American past, but the mortuary air of archaeology. The America that Lincoln was bred in, the homespun and humane and humorous America that he wished to preserve, has nothing in common with the sedulously classic monument."»Labels: USA
# posted @ 1:16 AM 0 comments | add a comment
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Chinese sculptor for an American Martin Luther King
Xinhua News Agency today reported that a Chinese sculptor had been given a major public commission by an American agency to create a realistic sculpture of Dr Martin Luther King. Dr King would be a natural choice for communities seeking a public memorial, and there are several realistic sculptures in cities around the world: in Westminster Abbey, London, UK (1998), Cleveland, OH (2003), Kalamazoo, MI (1989), and Austin, TX (1999) among others. Seattle Washington has a more abstract monument by Robert Kelley.
In 1996 the Bill Clinton signed a bill to create a national memorial in Washington, DC, to honor Dr King. Since that time a foundation has commissioned a design and is raising the estimated US$ 60 million needed to fund the monument's creation and ongoing maintenance. According to the foundation's website, the final design will include elements of a realistic representation of Dr King:«Added to these powerful sensory experiences will be a sculptural representation of Dr. King himself. This is not conceived of as a pure figurative depiction of his physical being, separate and apart from other elements, but rather would give another dimension and layer of meaning to the experience of the memorial as a whole. Dr. King will appear as an integral part of the "Stone of Hope", as if he embodies the stone itself. He will be positioned on the side of the stone facing the Jefferson Memorial and will be gradually revealed as part of the procession towards the Tidal Basin.»
It is possible that the Chinese artist Lei Yixin has been commissioned by this foundation, but so far they have made no announcement of the commission of the realistic sculpture, which is just one element in the overall monument's design.
Here's the Xinhua story:
«CHANGSHA, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese sculptor from central China's Hunan Province has been chosen to sculpt a stone statue of Martin Luther King, which will be unveiled in the Martin Luther King Square in Washington in 2008.
Lei Yixin, the 53-year-old director of the Hunan Sculpture Institute, received the contract from the Sculpture Committee of the Martin Luther Square (SCMLS) on Sunday, as well as video, photographs and reading materials of the American hero.
"This is a recognition of Chinese sculptors," said the excited Lei, who has worked in sculpting for over 20 years.
The SCMLS approached Lei in July after he had made a 2.3-meter-tall sculpture at the International Stone Sculpture Conference.
"To me, the image of Martin Luther King is a black man with broad shoulders and sparkling eyes full of vigor. He symbolized courage in pursuit of equality," he said.
Lei has won several prizes in China and his works are on display in Changsha Square.»
I can't find any other hints of whether this commission really is for the US national memorial, or for a smaller site in Washington DC or indeed somewhere in Washington state. If anyone can help clarify, it would be most appreciated.
This story reminded me of one of my first public art posts, way back in 2003, about the controversy around a sculpture of Dr King in Rocky Mount, NC, USA. Many members of the public in Rocky Mount were unhappy with the likeness of the new piece, so one businessman offered to commission a new work in China, at a much cheaper price than the first one had been commissioned. The story was reported by the Guardian.Technorati Tags: China, sculpture
Labels: USA
# posted @ 1:02 AM 3 comments | add a commentThat is true,he is talking about the same MLK project you mentioned above,you can find more details in these link..but it is in Chinese.
http://www.hn.xinhuanet.com/2006-08/16/content_7798099.htm
By, at 5:35 PM
This is Irony at it’s height. An artist from a communist nation will create the monument one of the greatest democratic and human rights heroes. Speaking through an interpreter, Lei said “I spent a whole lot of time gathering material about Dr. King,” Lei said. “I tried to get the feel of what was inside his mind.” -Reuters. This artist doesn’t even speak English and based on his own words didn’t know anything about Martin Luther King. This is simply tragic and Ironic.
»
ByNero, Dr King belongs to the world. I wouldn't tell an artist he doesn't have the right to sculpt Dr King because he "doesn't even speak English", or comes from a "communist" country. In fact, I think his slight touch of social realist style works well. See my later posting here
ByKatong, at 2:26 PM
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Cloud Gate Cops
Particularly nice shot of Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, installed in Chicago in 2004. According to Wikipedia (!) it has become one of the most popular public art works in the world. See also Sky Mirror, in Nottingham, UK.Labels: USA
# posted @ 12:35 PM
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Dan Witz's homepage
I blogged one of Dan's Face projects some months ago. Here's his homepage, with links to lots of fun stuff, including more faces. His "in progress" section includes a series stickers and painted shadows on existing streetscape surfaces. I give you here a little taste of his urban water lilies...Labels: USA, web resources
# posted @ 1:02 PM
Saturday, May 06, 2006
The CIA and public art
At least it distracts them from illegal "renditions" and torture... See this article on Kryptos, the public artwork on the grounds of the CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA, USA.Labels: USA
# posted @ 1:19 PM
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Ultimate in home Christmas decorations
Singapore is no slouch when it comes to the "Christmas light-up", never without its critics of course. But check out this home setup - animating the whole house light-up to music (which broadcasts over a local radio frequency, so that neighbours aren't disturbed ((too much!))). In fact the house became so famous that the road infront was completely blocked by traffic, and the homeowner had to agree to switch the whole thing off. (Courtesy of urban screens - see their rss feed at http://culturebase.org/home/urbanscreens/screensblog/atom.xml).Technorati Tags: electronic cultural atlas, public art, urban screens
# posted @ 10:29 AM
Friday, December 23, 2005
our kind of travel guides
Recently reviewed in the New York Times, the ART-SITES GUIDES TO CONTEMPORARY ART AND ARCHITECTURE, by Sidra Stich, Art SITES, all volumes, paperbacks, at US$19.95
From the review:«Ms. Stich is the sort of guide who can tell you how to find a James Turrell neon light installation in Barcelona and the optimal time to view it. "If you can't find this work, don't despair; it's not always turned on," she warns, and then gives directions to someone who assist you.»# posted @ 10:47 AM
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Tracing Shadows
chalk mark records of moments and places, by Brooklyn artist Ellis Gallagher. See this article in the NYTimes.# posted @ 10:55 AM
Another stone sculpture symposium - "Minnesota Rocks!"
Is this a trend?«Artists from Finland, Mexico, Germany, Zimbabwe, Austria, Japan, Egypt and China are joining four from the Twin Cities and two from northern Minnesota after answering a worldwide call for stone carvers. They will chisel and carve in public view, and organizers will install the finished pieces at permanent sites to be determined throughout St. Paul.»# posted @ 10:18 AM
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Twenty years of Percent for Art in New York
Article by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times looks at the program's achievements. Says Kimmelman, "the phrase 'successful public art project' may sound like an oxymoron", and we know what he means. In setting the context he ranges across the great NYC public art controversies, Tilted Arc and John Ahearn's busts in the Bronx.
In Kimmelman's view, the Percent for Art Program in New York, with its more than 200 installations "in schools, parks, police precincts and branch libraries", has led to an understanding that public art should be governed by a different set of criteria than gallery art. "Public art might be good but not successful, or vice-versa". Success being a measure of how it is accepted by the public, and here the values are of modesty, and what Adam Gopnik calls a "weakness for didacticism [that] becomes compellingly poetic". Over all, success comes from the ability of a work to insinuate itself into a landscape, to recognize and respond to the passage of time.Technorati Tags: percentforart, newyorkcity, public art
Labels: USA
# posted @ 7:56 AM
Saturday, July 30, 2005
a new public art database - in St Louis, USA
Gee, perhaps one day we can have a listing of public art databases around the world. Singapore, St Louis, Taiwan, more are coming up every day. This database is very well put together, even if the size of the pictures is a bit ungenerous. It is a creation of the Regional Arts Council of city and county of St Louis.
I've only been to St Louis once, in 1982 or something, when some classmates and I drove over from New Hampshire for a couple of weeks in the summer. We had a great trip, I remember, debutante balls and river rafting in the Ozarks, all terribly exotic to me. But one of my strongest memories was, wait for it, the Arch, by Eero Saarinen.
A lovely modernist gesture - and a work that was NOT PHALLIC, not in form anyway. Impressive and monumental. In the words of the judges of the contest to choose this monument ""had the inevitable quality of the right solution". To this day when I meet someone from St Louis I tell them how much I like the Arch... A bit crazy, I admit. Anyway, this page of public art in Central St Louis, includes “the Arch”.Technorati Tags: public art database, USA, sculpture
Labels: USA, web resources
# posted @ 5:08 PM
Boing Boing: Nightmarish statue at The National Bowling Stadium in Reno, NV
Boing Boing blogs a posting on Nightmarish statue at The National Bowling Stadium in Reno, NV. The "realistic" bronze figures have a ghoulish look about them, and the action that the sculptor is seeking to capture, a family running forward to the lanes, becomes completely distorted.
This is quite a common effect with such realism, especially if there is an attempt to give some action to the scene. More formal sculptures don't quite have the same feeling. I'm interested in the "creepiness" of realistic statues of the human form, and the relationship between such statues and ideas we have about non-material human presence (through memories, spirits, ghosts, etc).
An article I wrote on Chinese sculptor Wang Keping talks about this a bit.Technorati Tags: sculpture, public art
Labels: USA
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Sunday, July 24, 2005
Great installation in sacramento airport - by Seyed Alavi
What better use for inkjet printing on carpets than this installation for an airbridge at the Sacremento airport. The "flying carpet"!Labels: USA
# posted @ 11:53 PM
Friday, July 22, 2005
Talk about 'Text in the City' - Jenny Holzer in Pittsburgh
See the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette headlined Blue light special of a different kind tells a good story. This installation by Jenny Holzer will lead to an entire novel about Pittsburgh being broadcast in lights... it will take about ten hours for the novel to be "read".Labels: USA
# posted @ 5:06 PM
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Digital Techniques for public murals
This from the UCLA/SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital/Mural Lab, an initiative of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, a muralist/public art team based in Los Angeles. The importance of the Mexican muralists in the style developed here is clear, but the use of digital techniques seems to be bringing the work into different directions.Labels: USA
# posted @ 3:35 PM
New Stations of the Cross
An Episcopalian church in Connecticut, USA, just issued a press release entitled Memorial to the Innocent Victims of War - New Stations of the Cross for a Connecticut Church Stir Controversy. The Stations of the Cross, depicting the suffering of the Christian prophet Jesus is one of the great artistic themes of public religious art in the West. Here artist Gwyneth Leech interprets her "stations" with reference to the suffering of those involved in contemporary conflicts: Darfur, Iraq, what in the US they call "the Middle East" (but they mean Palestine). Jesus before Pilate is portrayed in the orange prison suit of the Guantanamo detention center. Jesus stripped of his garments is based on Abu Graib photos.
The paintings are on wood, displayed inside the church, which is open seven days a week to visitors.
[update Aug 18: according to Community Arts, these paintings "are under fire" from conservative Christians. Not sure of the intensity or direction of fire...]Labels: USA
# posted @ 3:18 PM
Sunday, July 10, 2005
San Diego Takes a Stand: Bland is Good
There is lots of weird public art out there, and this new sculpture in San Diego of fish jumping between two statues of fish cannery workers (on can pedestals) certainly qualifies. What is more rare is a mainstream newspaper article that takes issue with the work so directly, and with such a good headline (as in title of this blog posting).
Labels: USA
# posted @ 12:10 PM
