Art at work

An Occupy Wall Street protester Dylan Spoelstra (described by police as ‘not the sharpest crayon in the box’) has been talked down from his perch on Mark di Suvero’s 21 meter high sculpture Joie de Vivre in New York’s Zuccotti Park. The sculpture - most often described in the New York media as a ‘statue’ - was moved to the Park from the Storm King Art Centre in 2006 and has been a focal point for Wall Street protesters. Posters and other stuff that was attached to the work during the protest was quickly removed (it probably didn’t hurt that di Suvero’s wife is NYC Department of Cultural Affairs commissioner). Spoelstra proved to be a stickier proposition staying put for a couple of hours calling for New York’s Mayor to resign. The police put air bags under the sculpture and eventually talked him down, but the general feeling is that the Mayor is not going anywhere.

Images: Left, Mark di Suvero’s Joie de Vivre. Right top, Dylan Spoelstra being talked down and bottom, protest action on di Suvero’s work

I will need walls

As one of his greatest works is in New Zealand, Richard Serra’s work always has special resonance when we come across it. And so at Basel, at the top of an escalator itself transformed by Daniel Buren (another global artist with strong New Zealand connections) with his trademark green stripes, we came across a suite of recent Richard Serra prints. And, what a surprise (sorry Francis), we both immediately read them as landscapes, thanks to McCahon. This effect is not something that probably affects anyone under the age of 30. This time though for us the switch to reading the works for what they probably were, walls of steel, was almost instantaneous. And, in there somewhere, is a good argument to get even more art from other cultures and other places into and onto our land. While McCahon’s revelation of our landscape in abstraction was important, there’s even more to it now with interventions like Serra’s meandering wall - a landscape with lots of lovers, Richard Serra included.