Yeah, the Vaillancourt fountain is intriguing and I’d like to see it in person. Kind of a brutalist “industrial site” vibe but with artfully crafted cascades and walkways. Like a more approved user-friendly version of the sorts of big dangerous built environments that stupid teenagers break into for stupid reasons, but remember the mesmerizing menacing massiveness of in the back of their minds all the rest of their lives.
I tend to feel that when it comes to public art, “ugly” has to mean something more than just “not pretty” or “not smooth or polished” or even “not beautiful”.
I can see how the sculptor was being playfully creative, but I’m sorry, there’s just nothing remotely aesthetic about the result. The measure of a work of art is the final product, not how much fun the artist had creating it.
Frankly I don’t consider it ugly in its present state, rather thought provoking.
Article (German language) with video
What I am concerned about is whether they really considered
the consequences (on children and fountain) of children climbing on the figures (as they will do). Part of the statuary does not look that robust.
how the fountain will look once it has weathered and leaves have accumulated and moss has grown in some places. It does not like amenable to easy maintenance.
I mean, this is Vienna. The place probably has more statues per square mile than any city in the world - you can’t throw a strudel without hitting a statue of a Greek god, Empress Maria Theresa or a Durer rabbit. One ugly statue out of several thousand passable to beautiful ones is really no big deal.
Vienna has some of the most beautiful art on earth, and with so much of the sublime, it almost requires the grotesque for balance. For example, just Google Egon Schiele if you don’t already recognize his name. Or Google Rudolf Schwarzkogler (on second thought, no, please don’t Google Rudolf Schwarzkogler).
Italy had a similar gruesome counterpoint in the 1960s: Arto Povera, a sort of post-traumatic brain injury minimalism.
I think it is cool, I would like to paint it in colours. Many, discordant, bright colours: pink and glow-green and violet and orange and the like.
There are many statues with which I would like to do this, the idea occurred to me first with King Leopold the Second’s statue by the Royal Palace, in Brussels:
I would love to paint the horse white with black dots, like Pippi Langstrumpf’s, his face green, his hair pink, his uniform orange and golden, his boots a bright prussian blue and his hands a deep bloody red.
The fountain in Vienna would be a much more joyous performance. Perhaps I should send an official application to see how they react.
No, this thread exists because someone spent 2 million Euros of taxpayer money on this abomination. That’s “interesting” in a bizarre sort of way, but it doesn’t equate to merit.
Art can be abstract and even whimsical and still be good and even great art. But it does have to have some positive appeal to basic aesthetics, especially if it’s on prominent public display. This, in my opinion, does not.
