When it comes to public art give me stuff that is beautiful, inspiring, maybe whimsical. Just don’t allow the artist to shove his political, cultural or bizarre aesthetic views down my throat. That’s what galleries are for. Bland is fine. I don’t want to have my world view challenged as I walk down the street.
A case in point is the awful sculpture called Ancient Fishing which has now been mercifully relegated to a gallery space where we don’t have to look at the damn thing if we don’t want to.
For several years the sculpture terrorized undergraduates on East Campus Mall, a thoroughfare that connects the classroom buildings with the Southeast dorms, housing mostly freshmen. How many nightmares did this nightmare inspire?
It was finally removed last week not because of its fundamental ugliness but because it was breaking down outside in the elements (how could anybody tell?) and it had been the subject of graffitti (no doubt from students trying to improve it, a noble but doomed effort).
But here’s the thing that really gets my goat. The university couldn’t just move the damn thing. They had to get permission from the artist, a guy named Jim Dines. The same thing happened when the much-hated Nails Tails was removed from a small plaza in front of the UW Field House and Camp Randall. For years the “artist” refused attempts to put it someplace more appropriate, like the bottom of Lake Mendota, until he finally relented and it was moved to… someplace. It’s never been heard from again and everybody is happy about that.
Public entities have to stop signing agreements with artists that give them this kind of control over public spaces. If the public hates their work the public shouldn’t be forced to view it.
Give me more Hans Christian Heg. Give me more Lady Forward. Give me more Abe Lincoln. Give me less skulls and pallets.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 