Suspense Stories

We received the Gow Langsford 2007 Catalogue yesterday. It is an impressive 84 pages plus six fold outs. One of these features a suite of prints and accompanying sculpture by overthenet favourite Jeff Koons, which allows us to segue into this remarkable lookalike. Here we see the tragic end of Mary the elephant and Koons’s marquette of Train, a working 1940s locomotive suspended from a crane for the Los Angeles County Museum. The sad fact of the image on the left is that Mary, unlike the proposed full sized locomotive on the right, is being executed, not displayed. The facts, in so far as they are known, are that Mary, a professional circus performer, killed Red Eldridge while being taken for a drink in Kingsport, Tennessee. Circus owner Charlie Sparks took the temperature of the angry crowd and agreed that Mary would be hanged in the Clinchfield Railyards. More than 2,500 people gathered to watch. The Koons sculpture, on the other hand, will be able to be seen by anyone driving the 10 Freeway or entering the museum, given that the sculpture will be 50 meters high.

Images: Left the execution of Mary. Right Train - Model by Jeff Koons Production / Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The 70-foot locomotive dangling from a 161-foot crane, is to be placed in front of the "BP Grand Entrance."