August 25, 2005
A Speculative Anatomy of A Local Public Art Project
by Jerome du Bois
Once upon a time I worked for two metal sculptors, who occupied the same studio. Call one C, the other A. Often we would pile into the pickup and drive from here to there, usually for food, and on the way we would pass a concrete platform by a canal that could possibly be designated a bus-stop / public art site. C and A would speculate about their respective responses, and, although I had at least as much art background as these two men, I usually just listened. But of course I made my judgments.
C was of the heroic-statue --or turd-in-the-plaza-- school, depending on one's judgment. He would make a thing --of metal and glass and whatever-- and people would stand around and look at it, and then go wait for the bus in a conventional bus shelter, maybe with a little wave of brushed-aluminum flair.
A had a different take. The thing was next to a canal. Was there a way to filter, disinfect and divert some of the steady water . . . ? You could set up a pump . . . You see, to me, anyway, A did the most basic take a human can do:
Where am I?
Answer: Phoenix, Arizona, where it's triple-digit temperatures at least half the year. His idea was to create a giant shaded but open ramada with wide cooldeck walkways surrounding a cool concrete, three-dimensional maze of waterfalls and stepped rills and small channels and zigzags, like a perpetual Escher come to life. Sophisticated, directional misters and waterwalls. Greenery, flowers bursting out everywhere. And, yes, it would extend out to the street, where the benches would be kept cool for the waiting patrons.
Compare that to something --a standalone piece, anything, plug in your favorite statue-footprint --Tom Otterness!-- which people have to stand in the broiling sun to look at and then . . . what? Be uplifted? enlightened? enlifted? No.
Today I read that Dennis Oppenheim (bad idea) has been selected over Tom Otterness (worse idea) and Donald Lipski (ditto) for a $300,000 public artwork outside a new Scottsdale Police Department facility, which includes the forensics laboratory.
I'm going to discuss why they are all variations of the C school of public art, self-aggrandizing, egoistic, site-unspecific, and a cheap bauble addition to the city's charm bracelet.
And then I'll describe my own alternative born out of the A school, which again addresses the question: Where am I?
Tom Otterness is just Fisher-Price writ large, and often nasty. His response was cacti and desert animals cast in bronze in his usual toothpaste-squoze style. Eight feet high. Next! Jeebus. He probably had an assistant dash off a couple of ideas. What these stupid shapes, blazing and burning our eyes in the Arizona sun, may have to do with forensics and law enforcement, must be left to lurk in the lichen of Mr. Otterness's mind.
Donald Lipski, with his Scottsdale-O-Scope, cannot do much better. Where am I? I dunno, but look at this thing, look through this thing. I made it out of ten thousand watchamacallits, plus a few widgets. And forensics? Say what? Hey! I made this thang! Me, Donald Lipski, famous artist! Science: Police Department? Huh? Mortal stakes. No? Okay, bye.
So along comes Dennis Oppenheim with his usual giant clunky cutout crap, only it refers to forensics in a very crude way --tire prints, DNA, fingerprints-- so the Scottsdale aficionados go gaga. But look at it:
(Photo by David Kadlubowski / Scottsdale Republic)
Those little blobby dancy shapes in the background are metal cacti, transformed somehow by the magic only Oppenheim has mastered. I really don't know what the area in front describes; I can mention a simple omission, though: SHADE, you dumbass.
What, people are supposed to follow the thin petal thrown by that pitiful frond? Even abandoned Jonah had more shade. Oh, and Dennis --Where are you?
I'll tell you where. It's just my speculation, but Marilyn Zeitlin, Ted Decker, and ASU just got hold of a bunch of Oppenheim's sacred archives, a bunch of drawings, and so forth, so now they are the go-to place for the portable Oppenheims, I guess you'd call it. (I don't know what's going to happen to the big blue perforated-metal shirt out front. Transported to President Crow's front lawn later, maybe?)
Here is my answer to what should have happened there.
I would learn from every one of Robert Irwin's mistakes at the Getty Garden in LA, and then create a true garden for the men and women who will work in that building.
What do they do in there? They confront horror, and the splattered results of the hell that humans inflict on one another. They look at the pictures nobody sees, that nobody wants to see, that nobody should see; they handle the "materials" we will never have to, so we don't have to. Every day, every night, they wrestle with scientific uncertainties and blank walls that would have us up all night, all day, with the heebie-jeebies.
So I would spend $300,000 (some invested for continued maintenance) on a completely-shaded, fragrant, water-filled garden, full of nooks and crannies and paths, and little spots to watch waterfalls . . . and filled with the perfumes of flowers, of gardenia and roses and jasmine. The sound of water, the smell of flowers, natural beauty to look at all around, the cool cool cool of shade, waterwalls, real cushions on the benches, benches with backs to lean in to and breath deep the sweet wet cool air . . .
The piece would be about the people who work at the site, about maintaining their psychological health. Not the site itself, its architecture or its immediate surroundings; and certainly not the artist, his or her reputation ("I've been wanting to make this thing for years!"); or a feather in the city's cap. Why should useless art trump the psychological health of those who travel on the drop edge of intensity, disappointment, frustration, and human pain every day?
No way. And, to be honest, making a place for them to decompress would just be compensation for the $300,000 going to an art piece rather than a crucial piece, or two, or three, of forensic equipment. In fact, that would be the only way it would be worth it; to bind wounds that most of us will never see.
Posted by Jerome at August 25, 2005 05:30 PM | TrackBack