Public "Art"

[JFK]

CaptainYooh's discussion about art vs decoration is one of the most pedantic and boring things I've ever seen on CP.

[CaptainYooh]

Man, you're gonna get a few thanks for this post.

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by Angelamc

I don't understand the rusty look thing, there is a bunch at Memorial & 10th as well. It makes me think I need a tetanus shot and a can of Tremclad.

When it comes to needing a zero maintenance steel, the options are cor-ten (weathering steel), galvanized, and stainless.

Stainless for something like this would be insanely expensive. Galvanized would be difficult with large pieces, and would be more expensive as well. The basically leaves one option.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

The basically leaves one option.

Not building it at all?

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by getbak

Not building it at all?

Cor-ten looks just fine, IMO.

[vanisleflamesfan]

Personally, I find it shocking, SHOCKING, that a city full of neo-conservative, oil workers has terrible taste in public art.

"If art, all art, is concerned with truth, then a society in denial will not find much use for it" .Jeanette Winterson

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by vanisleflamesfan

Personally, I find it shocking, SHOCKING, that a city full of neo-conservative, oil workers has terrible taste in public art.

"If art, all art, is concerned with truth, then a society in denial will not find much use for it" .Jeanette Winterson

As art is subjective, so is taste. It is impossible to determine if something is in good or bad taste just because you, or the whole contempory art world have decided to like it

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

Second trap is for those who understand why this tin of crap is a poop joke. This group is somewhat educated on the subject and is snotty/sarcastic enough to laugh at those who bought it for "art". They might buy it to show off how smart they are by knowing it. You are falling into this second art trap. Because regardless of your buying motives, you both paid a lot of money for a tin of crap (or plaster, if that makes all the difference for you).

That makes no sense. If I'm fully aware of what I'm buying and why, where is "the trap"?

"The trap" is in your head, not in my. You see a problem with something that I am doing knowingly and gladly, even though it doesn't affect you in any way. Why? To me it seems like you still desperately are trying to hang on to the ridiculous idea of "art", and "art" having some right and wrong reasons to buy it.

Let me illustrate the problem with another poop joke example. Let's assume I am indeed a millionaire with more money than I know what to do with.

If I paid Chris Rock 100k to come to by house to tell poop jokes, the only people who would see a problem would be people thinking poop jokes are inherently in bad taste. Nobody would say I somehow fell into some trap.

If I paid Chris Rock 100k to come tell poop jokes at my art gallery, then suddenly you'd have tons of people commenting on the possible significance of it, because suddenly it's "art". If I mentioned it on twitter before the day, I'd probably have some journalists from art magazines wanting to come see it and then write about the significance of it. You'd probably tell me that I fell into some trap of thinking I'm so funny/smart whatnot. A lot of people would probably claim I'm a pretentious idiot who does not understand art.

Obviously of course there is no difference. I just paid Chris Rock for poop jokes because I have too much money to spend and I happen to like poop jokes. It's quite possible the art gallery was a randomly chosen part of my large estate, with no meaning attached to it on my part. Even if said that in public, some people would still use the situation to comment on it from the angle of what it means to "art". They'd likely then use it as an example of how people like me are destroying the significance of art, how it's terrible that I have a personal art gallery which I randomly use for other things like Chris Rock telling poop jokes.

Another example:
If I bought "Merda d'Artista" at a novelty shop for $37 (the original price of the cans in 1961), I don't think anybody would come saying I'm stupid. It would just be a novelty item, like a mug with a quote on it, or a bobblehead. A poop joke in physical form.

If I buy that exact same can for the same price from an artist, then suddenly I'm an idiot again. Because now it's "art".

That's the trap you're falling into, continuously thinking that the part where it's art is somehow significant. It's not.

[JohnnyB]

This thread has devolved into something much stupider and more annoying than what is being built on the side of that road. Excellent job everyone. Much lower budget too.

[monkeyman]

I don't mind spending on art projects, but so much of this seems forced and quite frankly, tacky and ill-conceived. I wonder how much of this "art" will still be around in 20/50/100 years?

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

I wanted to comment on Bunk's earlier post on some of Calgary's more palatable examples of public art. I took the photo below this afternoon at Weaselhead. Kinda falls under Bunk's group of samples. This garbage can was decorated with a flower print and it made it look nicer. But at no time there was additional artistic value added to this work. It is a pure 100% decoration, which is a legitimate and very useful public initiative/undertaking.



On the opposite side of that is justifying public spending on the added artistic value of a decoration by the appointed committee, which believes in its expertise to do so. That's inexcusable.

Medieval, illiterate citizens of Florence were trusted by their ruler to select the winning public art concept between Da Vinci's and Michelangelo's work by casting simple ballots before a winner was chosen. Worked well, actually.

This part I very much agree with. It's also more relevant to the actual topic than "Merda d'Artista", which is a very marginal case

[Hot_Flatus]

Originally Posted by monkeyman

I don't mind spending on art projects, but so much of this seems forced and quite frankly, tacky and ill-conceived. I wonder how much of this "art" will still be around in 20/50/100 years?

Cities everywhere have art pieces that are questioned, and to be fair, that is the nature of art. My issue with many of these installations is the fact that they are put in places where no-one will see them instead of next to gathering spaces, along popular trails etc.

First and foremost, whoever is taking ownership of these projects should be answering to a committee comprised of regular citizens, councillors, artists and city planners as opposed to operating under a cloak. Every time one of these pieces is erected there is a huge fallout due to the fact that nobody seems to know it was even going to happen.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by Hot_Flatus

Cities everywhere have art pieces that are questioned, and to be fair, that is the nature of art. My issue with many of these installations is the fact that they are put in places where no-one will see them instead of next to gathering spaces, along popular trails etc.

First and foremost, whoever is taking ownership of these projects should be answering to a committee comprised of regular citizens, councillors, artists and city planners as opposed to operating under a cloak. Every time one of these pieces is erected there is a huge fallout due to the fact that nobody seems to know it was even going to happen.

I wonder if de-coupling the program from infrastructure specifically is the right way to go.

If we're going to fund it, let's just fund it in an ongoing program from of our property taxes. Then we can be perfectly selective about location, timing, budget, process and selection.

Right now, so much of our infrastructure is tied to grants from other levels of government that do not afford the ability to pool funds from projects - it must be spent, as a condition of the funding, on site. Since so much of our infrastructure is also pretty mundane things like Interchanges and Sanitary lift stations and the like, the locations aren't optimal for art.

That's not to say there shouldn't be a mandate to make public infrastructure attractive, but that doesn't necessarily have to do with public art pieces.

I think I'd rather go big in some key locations, and focus on smaller stuff elsewhere. Overall, I think we could spend less and have a bigger impact.

[Resolute 14]

The moment you decouple it you open yourself up to far more complaints about the cost. Most people are annoyed at Traditional Blackfoot Construction Debris because it is just butt ugly. Some at the cost. Far more people would be complaining about cost if we were instead talking about a $10 million annual art budget (or whatever we ultimately spend per year), even if $9.5 million of that ends up in tasteful designs.

Burying the cost into the capital project stifles that complaint most of the time.

[Bunk]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

The moment you decouple it you open yourself up to far more complaints about the cost. Most people are annoyed at Traditional Blackfoot Construction Debris because it is just butt ugly. Some at the cost. Far more people would be complaining about cost if we were instead talking about a $10 million annual art budget (or whatever we ultimately spend per year), even if $9.5 million of that ends up in tasteful designs.

Burying the cost into the capital project stifles that complaint most of the time.

You may be right, but I don't think good public policy is to deliberately try and bury costs. My argument is, let's either have the guts to do it, fund it, and be transparent about it, or just don't do it. Not sure the current approach is working all that well. If you had a generic program there's almost zero chance you'd end up with the two projects that have caused so much controversy. You rarely see complaints about projects in locations of actual value in people's eyes (public parks, civic spaces, etc).

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by vanisleflamesfan

Personally, I find it shocking, SHOCKING, that a city full of neo-conservative, oil workers has terrible taste in public art.

"If art, all art, is concerned with truth, then a society in denial will not find much use for it" .Jeanette Winterson

Another stupid thing I keep seeing repeated in this thread.

So what about all the liberal latte sippers who hate this art? Or is their dislike actually valid artistic criticism? And what about all the other stuff that Bunk posted that people have no problems with? Or is it just too convenient to make moronic remarks about hicks and take potshots at the city?

Isn't it possible the hicks and the latter sippers agree on things once and a while?

But I guess you sure showed us with that quote. I guess I just am in denial about the truth while I drive by an ugly blue ring and rocks on sticks.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bunk

You may be right, but I don't think good public policy is to deliberately try and bury costs. My argument is, let's either have the guts to do it, fund it, and be transparent about it, or just don't do it. Not sure the current approach is working all that well. If you had a generic program there's almost zero chance you'd end up with the two projects that have caused so much controversy. You rarely see complaints about projects in locations of actual value in people's eyes (public parks, civic spaces, etc).

I think the way it operates right now seems to be working well 95% of the time, its that last 5% that we need to work on.

I agree with Resolute, the outcry over this and the blue circle is the combination of them being ugly and expensive.

You've got people saying that Calgarians are inherently philistines who cant appreciate art when its just as likely that its the part of our culture where we abhor wasting money on crap.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Locke

I think the way it operates right now seems to be working well 95% of the time, its that last 5% that we need to work on.

I agree with Resolute, the outcry over this and the blue circle is the combination of them being ugly and expensive.

You've got people saying that Calgarians are inherently philistines who cant appreciate art when its just as likely that its the part of our culture where we abhor wasting money on crap.

Agreed on both accounts. I'm also annoyed that they try to dress it up as some Blackfoot indigenous monument or homage to their culture. If this construction rubble is representative of southern Alberta Blackfoot culture, then this artist from NY sure is good at representing the Blackfoot nation around the world:

Spoiler!

Man. These just scream BLACKFOOT.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Agreed on both accounts. I'm also annoyed that they try to dress it up as some Blackfoot indigenous monument or homage to their culture. If this construction rubble is representative of southern Alberta Blackfoot culture, then this artist from NY sure is good at representing the Blackfoot nation around the world:

Spoiler!

Man. These just scream BLACKFOOT.

They scream something alright but I think its closer to BULL#### than BLACKFOOT.

They got caught peddling garbage and they threw Indigenous People and the Blackfoot tribe in particular in front of them as a smokescreen.

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

Maybe they are working on another one of these installations at the 22x/McLeod interchange. I drove past yesterday and there were 6 or 8 steel girders sticking up out of the ground.

Yeah, they're building an overpass. Cool that you think it is pretty enough to be considered art.