Thankfully I only had to walk by this once, yet I was so fascinated I couldn’t help but walk in:
In downtown Orlando there’s a plaza/mall built on Burtonesque Fascist proportions where you feel you’re just an ant or a child, although it’s only about 50% Bauhaus/concrete modernist otherwise. Outside, and in the entrance, somewhat incongrously are 4 or 5 bronze-esque statues in more of a lat 19th-century style, but with the bases only halfway carved as if they were jumping out of the “rock”. (They were finely detailed enough that they would have seemed more in place in a rococo or art nouveau place.)
It only seemed a creepier place because there are only 2 stores operating in that breezy place so far.
I was there when that thing was unveiled. It was done on purpose. The artist (he says) was taken by a description he’d read somewhere of serpents “like a coil of excrement.” Doesn’t mean he wasn’t also thumbing his nose at the city.
Either way it is ugly, and the public reception was lukewarm.
That’s an excellent description of the public reception of most high-concept artwork. Lukewarm, with a smattering of “Oh God, what the hell is THAT?” The more I learn about designers/artists, the more I think they should be kept away from the public and have all their high-concept stuff interpreted through someone who makes them public-friendly. Sort of like the difference between runway fashions and what actually shows up in the mall.
My sister lives in Dublin (Ohio). It was the first thing they took me to see – Dublin’s big claim to fame. They are all unnaturally proud of their corn in Dublin, IMHO
The other locals were delighted to have a giant corn tourist from so far away as Florida. Clearly, they’d never been Weeki Wachee. I think Florida is the Master of Roadside Kitsch.
The Kansas City Hair Curlers help clutter up an already trashy skyline.
Many locals are real proud of this. I just can’t see why.
The pieces are ugly.
Two are almost identical.
Theme-wise one looks like it isn’t in any way connected to the others
Did I mention that they are ugly?
As a building ornament they are too big.
As a Cityscape enhancement they are too small.
I can’t find a good picture, but my campus, the University of Tennessee Knoxville, has a history of absolutely idiotuart being put on permanent public display. Which is ironic, because the art program has very good, if eclectic, taste. The temporary galleries are often fascinating and even exciting.
Exhibit A is a Greek Trireme model, with a pair of bronze legs sticking out over the top, a bronze moon symbol, and some horns. No one at the art department has idea what this is or why it was made, or if it was intended to communicate anything at all.
Exhibit B is a sort of metal T. We’re not sure it it was supposed to symbolize UT(which often uses a T) or was just a random shape. Basically, it is utterly pointless, a simple hunk of heavy metal.
I took an anthropology class when I was an undergrad called Born Again Religion where we read about this statue. Apparently a group of fundie Christians took great offense to the idea of a “demon idol” being placed in a public space.
There were two actual born again Christians in the class, who were pretty cool in general (I went to a hippie school where there were probably more Buddhists or pagans than evangelicals, so it wasn’t really a super friendly atmosphere for them), but the class discussion on this topic was the most heated we ever had. One of the Christian girls was in tears by the end of the class period.
So, it wasn’t a lukewarm reception for some people.
Richard Serra should never have quit his day job, I think we’d all be better off. Now, his “work” strikes me as being exactly what happens when you have funding for public art but everybody’s too afraid of pissing people off–you get some emperor’s tailor coming in with some big amorphous chunk of metal that is obviously not useful, but is also not controversial. Something that people will shrug and say “eh, what can ya do?” but otherwise not freak out over. I prefer the Poop Snake, at least it’s saying SOMETHING, even if nobody likes the message!
I think St. Louis might have gotten the worst of Serra’s works. The one in St. Louis is, I just learned, called “Twain”. But everyone refers to it as “The Serra Sculpture”. It is eight giant, now corroded, slabs of steel arranged in a near-triangle. The slabs are not curved, shaped, or in any way interesting, They’re just big steel panels. Here are two views: ground level; aerial. It is large, I will give it that.
See now, the funny thing is that the majority of people objected to the Indo Arch because they thought it was invoking lady genitalia! Just goes to show you that a whole lot of art is in the interpretation of the viewer, huh?
I like the OP one too. A lot of the other ones are boring, but not truly ugly. They look like the typical stuff you see around college campuses and on hospital lawns. Just because you can find a few large pieces of metal and weld them together does not make it art! The pink island thing however, is truly awful. It makes me feel a little bit ill.
Well, if you’re thinking ugly airport art, how about art so ugly it shows up on FailBlog? (Warning: Rated PG.)
The picture is from Oslo’s Gardermoen airport. It’s actually one of a series of statues, one of which is at the train station downtown near the platform for airport trains. Nicknamed “the Viagra ads”.
