[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published September 11, 2011.] Maybe it’s just us, but we feel like we’ve been seeing a whole lot of strange public art in recent months: for instance, Claes Oldenburg’s newest project, an enormous paintbrush, was unveiled last month in Philadelphia, Florentijn Hofman’s Big Yellow Rabbit was erected this summer, and a huge Marilyn Monroe sculpture was recently unveiled in Chicago (she also just turned up with an ugly tattoo — that’s adolescent sculptures for you). We can’t say we don’t like the idea of weirder and weirder public art popping up all over the world, so we thought we’d round up a few of our favorite examples here. Click through to see our gallery of bizarre public art, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorite exhibits in the comments!
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Dreamed up by Julius von Bismarck, Benjamin Maus, and Richard Wilhelmer, the Fühlometer (aka “Feel-o-meter”) is an interactive public art installation located on top of a lighthouse in Lindau, Germany, that monitors the moods of passersby via a digital camera, and then adjusts its own illuminated expression accordingly to happy, sad, or indifferent. Click through to see a clip of the device in action, as well as some additional photos. Read More »
After years of debates between environmentalists, politicians, and locals, Christo Javacheff’s massive, $50 million Over the River installation — a work that will suspend swaths of fabric over select segments of a 42-mile stretch of the Arkansas River in Colorado — has finally received the necessary approval by federal regulators. While some additional permits are still needed, a two-week display of the work could go up as early as August 2014.
Christo’s response to the news? “We are elated. Every artist in the world likes his or her work to make people think. Imagine how many people were thinking, how many professionals were thinking and writing in preparing that environmental impact statement.” Considering that he’s covering the full cost of the project, which is expected to generate $121 million in “economic output” and an estimated 400,000 visitors, this sounds like a good thing for the residents of Colorado.
Our only real concern: the aforementioned “environmental impact” of the work. According to the Colorado Wildlife Commission, the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep who inhabit the area could be blocked from water sources as a result of the construction process. Measures are supposedly being taken to protect them, but there’s really no telling what the end result will be. [via NYT]
We know that “everyone’s a critic” is just a saying, but, when it comes to public art, seriously, everyone is a critic. We can’t blame bored teenagers, confused moms, and everyone in-between for poking fun at the usually-gigantic installations imposed on cities who want to convert their everyday spaces into an open-air museum. As much as we love some good highbrow criticism of these sorts of pieces, we’re just as interested in the controversies these works create on the street. After the jump, check out nine hyped works of public art and the dirty nicknames, biting jokes, and larger scandals forever swirling around their legacies.
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With Rob Pruitt’s sleek monument to Andy Warhol recently unveiled in Union Square and Sol Lewitt’s modular structures being installed in City Hall Park (both installations are presented by New York’s Public Art Fund), we’ve been contemplating innovative art that’s accessible outside the traditional context of museums and galleries. In the coming weeks as you take to city streets, benches, park lawns, (and garages!) keep an eye out for what’s going up around you. That skeletal advertising billboard may not be an actual advertising billboard but one of three works by artist Kim Beck. In celebration of Beck, Lewitt, Pruitt and other artists whose work is on public display this spring, take a virtual road trip with us from New York to Seattle to explore some of the most exciting works, both recently unveiled or well-renowned, in some Flavorpill cities.
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Where have all the young artists gone? Well, they’ve been priced out of Melbourne, New York, Barcelona, and all of those other city enclaves that promised low-rent and lots of encouragement. But new art communities are popping up every day on unexpected parts of the globe. Creative hubs, city funded projects, and lots of public works are just some of the perks these locations offer to young artists who seek refuge. Click through for our eight favorite cities for young artists, and leave a comment if we forgot your favorite.
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French sculptors Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne took over Florida’s celebrated Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden last week with an installation of more than 20 of their surrealistic and animal-inspired sculptures. Presented in conjunction with Art Basel Miami Beach, the whimsical works are spread throughout the highly cultivated Coral Gables institution’s grounds, where they will remain on view through May 2011.
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Aesthetic super-studio Ball-Nogues is like the 21st-century love child of the Factory and the Bauhaus.
Ball-Nogues is a one-stop shop for art, architecture, public projects, and design objects, both concepted and largely manufactured on-site in its cavernous Downtown LA Gallery District space. The studio’s conceptually avant-garde, eco-friendly, urban romanticism has been lauded in museums, showrooms, and festivals, garnering a rep for laid-back luxury.
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British artist Antony Gormley conquers New York’s Flatiron District with his legion of naked men, inhabiting pathways and sidewalks in and around Madison Square Park and perched on ledges and rooftops of buildings from 14th to 34th streets on Manhattan’s East Side. Cast from the artist’s own lean body in iron and fiberglass, the 31 anatomically correct statues, which make up the installation Event Horizon, literally swarm the park. Finding them is a bit like playing “Where’s Waldo?,” yet once spotted, they bring to mind the angels watching over Berlin in Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire.
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Three giant ladies in bathing suits, coming to a town near you (as long as you live in Washington, DC). The National Museum of Women in the Arts is installing new public art by the late Niki de Saint Phalle in front of its headquarters on New York Avenue NW; the sculptures are meant to be “showstoppers, as contemporary as the last splash of pop art, as exaggerated as Las Vegas showgirls.” Just what our nation’s capital needs in the form of cultural institution-approved public art: go-go dancers as seen through a distorted Pop Art lens.
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