I've decided to set up a running post on egregious examples of pointless and pretentious Art and Literature. It's kind of my own small version of Private Eye's Pseuds' Corner. Anyway I was prodded into this partly because of my earlier post, and on discovering a real-life example right under my nose. The area behind the institute where I work was the site of a disused prison which was demolished several months ago to make way for a new building to house the institute. The area has been lying idle for some months probably in anticipation for the real heavy digging next spring. Anyway, my colleagues and I were intrigued last week to see the workers constructing a steel-girder walkway cutting diagonally across the area. The installation (!, again) looked rather too flimsy to be an actual scaffold of some sort in relation to any kind of construction related activity and we were speculating that it may be a temporary pedestrian walkway in case the sidewalks were torn up or impeded to public access in the near future, or a stage for a free concert.
View from my office
However, according to a colleague, it is in fact a temporary art installation! (I haven't actually managed to come up with independent confirmation, however, I don't have any reason to doubt his veracity). Apparently there was a competition to instal (Aargh!) an artwork on the temporarily vacant lot and this was selected over the others (I'd love to see what the losing proposals must have looked like!) and cost around SFr 60,000 to erect (60,000 Francs that would have been more productively spent in filling potholes and effacing graffiti). Quite actually what this "work" signifies is unclear. From an aesthetic perspective it doesn't even begin to exist otherwise every bit of scaffolding should belong in a gallery, so it clearly must have some intent or message (contemporary artists are pretty verbose with their manifestos. Whatever happened to letting the art speak for itself?). So what exactly does it signify? The gullibility of art committees, the wastefulness of public funding, the Emperor's New Clothes?.....I confess to being totally baffled on this one.
Taken from the middle facing both ways
While we're on the theme of construction inspired art, I think the city council got off lightly. Carl Andre's pile of bricks must have probably cost the Tate a bomb.
Carl André, Equivalent VIII (don't you just love how the creative poverty is dressed up in a portentous title to acquire some gravitas)
An awe-struck group being enlightened on the creative possibilities inherent in tessellation and filling of Euclidean space
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