Statue of limitations

We’ve posted before on the rise (but mostly the fall) of socialist sculpture inspired by Weta’s commitment to this style of exaggerated realism (the rugby sculpture in Wellington, the Gallipoli giants at Te Papa) in New Zealand.  So what would stop us heading out into the countryside to check out Memento Park, Budapest’s museum of monumental statues from Hungary’s Communist past? Oh yes, that’s right, nothing. Was it worth the ride? Check out the pictures here on OTNSTUFF. 
Image: Stalin’s boots

Other OTN stories on falling sculptures
Fall guy
After the fall
Monroe
Christchurch

After the fall

If you’ve followed OTN over the years you’ve also followed many stories about when good art turns bad. In Ukraine at the moment there is a spectacular example of this as statues of Lenin are toppled one after the other. Last week it was the turn for the largest of them all at a massive eight meters on top of a tall plinth. It took the tumble after protesters gass axed through one of its legs and the crowd pulled hard on a rope tied round Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov’s neck. So far this year around 160 have been toppled and between Feburary 20 and 24 alone over 90 statues of Lenin came down. You can read a full account here at the Washington Post and watch the giant Lenin fall here.

When good sculpture turns bad

This barely squeezes into our series on public sculpture When good public sculpture turns bad, but it’s near enough since this particular one's having a double anniversary this year. That's 20 years since Jeff Koons’s Puppy was erected at Documenta 9 (Koons wasn’t invited but went anyway) and 15 years since it was showcased outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao at its opening. And that's where this story starts. 

As Puppy stood in readiness for the Museum's big opening day, its 43-foot frame covered with 20,000 individual flowering plants, three members of the Basque separatist group ETA set out to disrupt the opening and possibly kill or injure King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. The plan was to plant explosives in potted plants and detonate them via remote control during the opening events on the Saturday. 

On the Monday morning before, two policemen saw a suspicious-looking van parked in a side street near the Museum. The number plates turned out to be false and the police saw three men dressed as gardeners carrying potted plants toward Puppy. When the 'gardeners' saw the police approaching they fired four shots killing police officer Jose María Aguirre. The police took up the chase and soon all three were apprehended along with more explosives and firearms. The square where Koons’s Puppy now stands is named after the murdered policeman.

Bad to the bone

Anyone who has recently tried to get into badpaintingsofbarackobama.com will have discovered it has been taken down yet again by the dark forces. Bad art, even when it is lovingly done, is obviously more than the Presidential image can stand. But you can’t keep good bad art down and relief is at hand at the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) in Boston. While the President might be outside the Pale of inspiration, there's lots more in the online catalogue as well as the usual museum offering of tasteless branded items including mugs and t-shirts.

Images: Clockwise from top left. Mana Lisa by Anonymous, Erin Rothgeb’s Ronan the pug, Shy glance by Dawn Marie Jingagian and Dog bites man by Swedish bad artist Vlademar Cher

One of the reasons Te Papa and Te Manawa insist on barriers

Thanks G

Majestic Earth grounded

Neil Dawson has hung a lot of sculpture in the air over the years. In Wellington there are at least three works suspended in public places, The Rock, Ferns and, until this weekend, Majestic Earth. One of the reasons Dawson can hang works in the air is because he insists on a regular maintenance schedule as part of the initial contract. 

The last time we saw Neil was in Wellington late last year while he was doing a maintenance check on Ferns in Civic Square, so when we read in the newspaper that the earth part of Majestic Earth has fallen to the ground, we were surprised. Still, being in the when-good-sculpture-turns-bad business and having helped Neil install Majestic Earth, we went down to have a look. 

The globe part of the sculpture had been removed, although it was pictured in this morning’s Dominion Post, but the cloud section remains along with a few hanging wires. As we took a couple of pics we were approached by the building manager who was not a happy camper. As he, Neil and the owners had all refused to comment to the Dominion Post, we asked if the work had had regular maintenance. In fact, we asked three times.  His answer? A very firm, “YES IT HAS.”

Images: Left, Majestic Earth this morning, right, as reported in the Dominion Post

When scupture turns bad

The Dompost reports on a car hitting a Chris Booth lookalike at the Carlucci Land scupture park in Wellington.

Pointless

Wellington’s bid for the world’s most bizarre sculpture has been struck down from the sky. The sculpture was to feature onboard lasers but Civil Aviation thought they could well distract pilots coming in for an already difficult landing. Consideration was given to developing a mechanism that would permit pilots to turn the sculpture lasers off as they flew over but, incredibly, the idea was ruled out. Landscaper, Megan Wraight, commented, "Without [the lasers], the hook becomes just an object – it loses a poetic and a transcendent element."

When good art turns bad

The B of the Bang is a public sculpture in disgrace. Created by artist Thomas Heatherwick for the city of Manchester its pointy spikes were intended to represent the energy of a sprinter coming out of the blocks. Its terrible title comes from sprinter Linford Christie who once said he took off from her blocks on the B of Bang. Unfortunately the spikes had a habit of plummeting to the ground, a habit they formed only days after the sculpture was launched. Although no-one was impaled Omen-like it was considered too arbitrary and too controversial to have a public sculpture taking occasional pot shots at anyone fearless enough to take a stroll under its spiky presence. Taking the 56 meter sculpture apart has been a gas-axe job from heaven and the spikes have now all gone to recycling. All this, one suspects, was a cheaper job than the $3.5 million dollar commissioning cost and run on maintenance of around $750,000. The City did manage to claw back $4.2 million from the contractors but it has been bad PR for the sculpture industry. A local MP got about as much as you could hope from the mess saying, “It's been a very expensive waste of public money. But it's certainly been a topic of conversation for a lot of people, so in that sense it's been a successful piece of art."
Images: Top, the B of Bang coming down (Photograph by Mike Peel - www.mikepeel.net). Bottom left, glory days, right, weirdly prescient Omen priest, attempts to ward off fast approaching steeple lightening rod.

When good art turns bad

When it was first shown in the 1970s the Tate had to close the exhibition after four days because gallery visitors wrecked the work. Now Robert Morris’s installation Bodyspacemotionthings is fighting back. Reinstalled at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall this month, it has already sent 20 people to the first aid box and three kids to hospital. Follow up on the mayhem via the Guardian.
Image Robert Morris in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. More Guardian pictures here.

Saving face

It looks like the site has been pulled down, but for a few heady months www.badpaintingsofbarackobama.com displayed bad Obama portraits from around the US. Why anyone thought that in a digital world closing the site would close the case is anybody’s guess. You can expose yourself to more badly-painted Presidential pics here.

When good art turns bad

To get you going on Saturday morning, a perfect OTN when-good-art-turns-bad-at-the-movies moment. From the 1988 Tim Burton movie, Beetlejuice.

Things past

Maurice Agis, the 77 year old artist who’s inflatable lifted into the air and killed two people, has been convicted of breaching health and safety rules. The other two charges of manslaughter of the victims through gross negligence are still being considered by the jury who failed to reach a verdict yesterday.

When good horse sculptures turn bad

When the history of men who make large horse sculptures is written – a history we find our readers can’t get enough of – one name will stand above the rest: Luis Jiménez. In 2006 Jiménez paid the ultimate price of any MHS (Monumental Horse Sculptor). He was killed in his studio by his sculpture Mustang when it swung out of control while being hoisted. The sculpture crushed Jiménz against a gantry severing a major artery. Rushed to hospital, he died in the ambulance. This tragic event came at the end of the long and torturous process to create a 9.8 meter high rearing blue stallion with glowing eyes for Denver International airport. The work was commissioned in 1992 but constant delays dragged its completion into the 21st century. Jiménez’s son completed Mustang which was finally installed early in 2008.

The reaction has been mixed although at first criticism was muted by Jiménez's MHS sacrifice. Recently, however, opposition heated up when local developer Rachel Hultin launched a campaign to relocate the horse. Her weapon of persuasion – the Haiku. And so:

Ugly devil horse horrifies the traveler shames our fair city

To follow this bitter-sweet story go here.

Images: Top, Mustang rearing at the Denver International Airport. Bottom left, Luis Jiménez in his studio with the Mustang maquette and early work on the final sculpture, right Mustang being installed.

When good art turns bad

John Chamberlain's 4.3 meter sculpture Detroit Deliquescence stood outside that city’s McNamara Building for about 20 years, when it was taken down and sent to storage and repair at McKay Lodge Art Conservation, Inc. Because of ongoing corrosion, the work can no longer be installed outside and its size prevents it fitting through convention doors to enable an indoor installation. As a result it has been dissasembled and hidden fastenings attached to allow it to be moved in a number of smaller units and reassembled. According to the Wall Street Journal it is still at McKay Lodge. That got us to wondering what happens to all the damaged art that is subject to insurance claims as well as the unwanted art. A professional art mover in the States once told us that after claims are paid out, art works are transported to a storage warehouse and left. A museum of broken art.

When frogs hit the headlines

A "provocative" sculpture of a crucified frog by one of our favourite artists, Martin Kippenberger, has been condemned by Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope was taking his summer break at a mountain seminary near where the work is on display at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, Italy. As an indication of the power of frog sculpture Franz Pahl, the president of Trentino-Alto Adige regional council, went on an eight day hunger strike in protest ending in his hospitalisation. The offending work has been removed to the third floor from the museum entrance but remains on view. The Museum's director, Corinne Diserens, claims over 26,000 people have visited the frog.
Image: Martin Kippenberger's Zuerst die Füße (Feet First) (1990)

When good art turns bad

One of the strangest art sites on the web is worth1000.com. There’s a whole heap of geeks out there mashing celebrity heads with old master paintings. Run for your lives.

Fall guy

Given our obsession with Wellington’s public sculpture, we should have mentioned at the time that Weta wizard Max Patte’s sculpture Solace in the Wind was damaged when someone attempted to push it into the sea. The sculpture is of a naked bald guy (possibly castrated - hard to tell, but a nasty bump whatever) that leans at an angle off the edge of the wharf in front of Te Papa. It appears to be getting ready to take a dive. Which was what it did. Now it is back in place, as promised, and ready to once again take up its role as a diving platform for local kids. To celebrate its return, some lookalikes.
Images Top left Max Patte’s Solace in the Wind.

When good art turns bad 4

Back in May 2001 a South Korean army CH-47 Chinook helicopter broke up after striking a giant sculpture it was lowering onto a plinth above a road bridge in Seoul. The rotors clipped the statue sending the helicopter crashing to the ground, where it exploded in flames. Three died.

When good sculpture turns bad 3

The Liverpool arts company Brouhaha International has finally been charged, along with artist Maurice Agis, two years after their inflatable sculpture Dreamspace broke its moorings killing two people and injuring 13 others. The company Brouhahha is owned by the artists son and was created for him by Agis who described it as “surreal, magic, like swimming in a sea of changing colours”. You can read the original story here.

Image: Clockwise from top left, Dreamscape breaks loose