The Outstater
The Fraud of Official Art
“Whenever I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my Lugar.” — Hermann Göring
THE MAYOR this week unveiled “The Garner,” our city’s latest acquisition of outdoor art. It is shown above so you can judge for yourself but let me say I find it hopelessly abstruse. It took even the artist himself, Sacho Primo, the winner of a global competition for goodness sake, considerable effort to describe it:
“The installation is composed of six ascending metal arches that reflect the neighborhood’s industrial identity while symbolizing collective growth toward the future. Its organic upward movement evokes a tree growing within the park, creating a bridge between industry and nature. Oriented toward the historic Harvester factory tower, the sculpture establishes a visual dialogue with this iconic building.”
Do you see it? The visual dialogue? The bridge between industry and nature? The organic movement? Of course not. It’s a $20,000 curated fraud, so ugly it defies defacement.
There was a time, please know, when art was honest. The talent and careful study of the artist made a sunset beautiful, a pastoral scene restful, a portrait expressive. The artist, and not the viewer, was expected to put in the hard work to make it so.
There is an example of the classic school across town. It is a majestic bronze sculpture depicting my city’s namesake Gen. Anthony Wayne riding to war. The viewer needs no explication. It is clearly a man in a mid-18th century military uniform on a horse. The viewer can even tell from the art whether or not the general was only injured in the battle (one hoof off the ground) or died (two hoofs off the ground). Classical sculptors threw in a free history lesson.
This distinction between the two types of art is important in gauging public policy. An administration that commissions tens of thousand of dollars of art that nobody can understand is an administration that will tax your city to ruin.
An overreach? One of the great municipal thinkers didn’t think so. The late Roger Starr, a renowned urban planner and the housing commissioner for New York City, wrote a book about it. In the “The Rise and Fall of New York City,” Starr put forward the thesis that the elite of a city can get so caught up in the “all is relative” spirit of nonobjective art that they lose sound judgment, tempting financial calamity:
“I suggest that when the institutional leaders of a city make modern painting and sculpture their most prized art form, and when they devote as much time, intelligence and, not least, money to its pursuit as the New York leaders of the postwar world did, they demonstrate a set of values that endangers those needed to keep an urban polity on a firm, reasonable and safe course.”
So here we are, our parks and open spaces filling with expensive nonsense.
Still, a few years ago we enjoyed some poetic relief. Prior to the unveiling of “The Garner,” the pride of City Hall was “Helmholtz,” a 10-ton reddish orange example of Soviet “girder art” that passing motorists regularly mistook for a train wreck.
And ironically, in the wee hours one morning, “Helmholtz,” standing proudly in the downtown square, buckled in a low-speed crash. It turned out to be no match for a more reality-based work of art, a 2013 GMC Sierra truck, crafted by the uncultured at the local auto plant. Helmholtz incurred $30,000 in damages, the GMC Sierra only a dent.
At the wheel, we speculate, was an art critic. — tcl
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