Continuing the long human tradition of rock stacking, Ugo Rondinone’s contemporary art cairns are now looming around Rockefeller Plaza, casting their colossal shadows beneath Art Deco towers in an attempt to bring some ancient mystery to the busy summer streets.
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When I was in London last January, I had the chance to visit a hidden gem — well, depending on how you define “gem” — of a sculpture in the Guildhall Art Gallery in central London. Neil Simmons’ marble likeness of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has a very pretentious (as you might expect) name, “Rt. Hon. The Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, L.G., O.M., F.R.S.” (2001), and it sits in the corner of this small art museum with an excellent collection of Pre-Raphaelite painting.
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I first learned about Nick Cave’s work in an undergraduate puppetry class. Puppetry, like architecture and some other disciplines, is the synthesis of a myriad of techniques both artistic and mechanical, attracting sculptors, dancers, and engineers in equal number. Similarly, Cave’s 30-strong herd of horses that visited Grand Central last week in his piece HEARD•NY, presented by MTA Arts for Transit and Creative Time, as well as the “Soundsuits” for which he gained initial recognition are genre-bending works of art: they are visual and performative wonders as well as feats of construction. Cave is the director of the Graduate Fashion Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, so while he may be an unwitting puppeteer, he is certainly no stranger to the intersections of beauty, functionality, and craftsmanship.
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DALLAS — Dallas. It’s a city, it’s a vintage television soap opera, and it’s the home of Bush 43. But it’s also a hub of contemporary art? Though this Texas-sized city has a reputation for big hair, football, barbecue, and twang, it also has a long history of support for the visual arts. From the Dallas Museum of Art to the Nasher Sculpture Centre, the Dallas Contemporary, and their rival Fort Worth (which boasts the Amon Carter Museum, the Fort Worth Modern and the internationally renowned Kimbell Museum), the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has it all. The area’s artistic holdings feature ancient Greco-Roman antiquities, Michelangelo’s first painting, and major exhibitions by contemporary artists like Olafur Eliasson and Kara Walker. Yet as great as these institutions are, one of the most interesting places to view art in Dallas is in a shopping mall.
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The western span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge is coming alive. Starting March 5, it will light up nightly with 25,000 LEDs strung along its network of support cables, turning into the largest light sculpture in the world. In a preliminary test video of the installation by American artist Leo Villareal, the LED sparks flicker and dance along the length of the bridge, giving the inert structure a whimsical, digital personality that befits the technology capital of the U.S.
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Grand Central hosts 21,600,000 visitors annually, has been the site of numerous flash mobs, and now even has its own Apple store, but the venerable train station has never seen anything like this. Artist and performer Nick Cave has created 30 of his signature Soundsuits in the shape of horses. The array of equines will take up residency in Grand Central from March 25 to 31.
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PARIS — I met artist Andreas Kopp in early December, after a brisk pre-conference behind-the-scenes tour at LeWeb, in Paris. On my way out the door, rushing to catch my coat and the metro, I stumbled upon a group of German hipsters (They’re much more approachable that their American counterparts). Andreas and the Post It Art Creators team sprawled across giant sheets of paper, diligently sticking Post-it notes to a neatly organized grid.
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MIAMI — I suspect most visitors don’t know it, but just across the street from the convention center where Art Basel Miami Beach conducts its massive operation, there’s a very different type of artwork on view. A small sign at Convention Center Drive and 19th Street signals the way, pointing you away from the fair, west past a parking lot and to the corner of 19th and Meridian. There, another small sign announces your arrival in the right place: “Holocaust Memorial.”
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Wrapping the tip of Roosevelt Island that points out to the sea, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is a realm of stillness and meditation unlike anything else in the city. Designed as a memorial to the 32nd president, it is now just as much a call to remember its architect: the late lover of form and light, Louis Kahn. It is also long overdue, by almost four decades, from when it was first proposed in 1973. Yet even without all of its history attached, the most significant role of the completed park may be as a monument to the contemplative power of public space.
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I’ve always enjoyed riding the subway impossible distances — out to Coney Island, say, or the Far Rockaways — largely because the cityscape and the scenery change so much along the way. Traveling out to the ends of various lines transports you away from the New York City you know.
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