What is Art and What is Not?by Margaret Huntley Main
In the sculpture garden of a famous Dutch National Park, we once paused to view a bright hodge-podge of railroad tracks. They were gathered together as if Paul Bunyan had been playing jackstraws, welded at the points where they had fallen together and then painted a brilliant red. There was no sign to say "Keep Off," so small children crawled and climbed over the lower pieces, and nine-year-olds played King of the Mountain and Tight Rope Walker on the vertical tracks. Had this vermillion conglomerate been in a playground, it would have been right at home, but passing for priceless art in a famous sculpture garden? Excuse me? I recall a noted concrete sculpture fountain in San Francisco. It looks like the hardened tracks of a revolving cement truck gone amok, in which the thing got loose with its delivery tube flopping and went up and down hills, in and out of cul de sacs and over and through little ditches. When the stuff hardened, the sculptor got some friends with crowbars and pneumatic drills and they cut everything into 12 to 20 foot lengths. Then, back at the site to be "beautified," they stacked and leaned, balanced and braced the concrete pieces, added pipes going every which way and turned on the water. It was pretty wet and exciting for a while, but was it beautiful and was it art? Actually, the California drought demanded that the water be used elsewhere, and the horizontal ditch-shaped pieces became public waste baskets. At night these are also used as beds a-little-out- of-the-wind for the slender homeless-on star-studded nights, of course. I understand the City paid big bucks for all this concrete. Mercy. For a certain Las Vegas mall, the management commissioned a young woman sculptor to do one of her specialties, a pipe piece. She checked out local dumps and got miles and miles of old galvanized pipe-cheap. She cut it and welded it, quite like 20 or more Tin Men from Oz, and sprayed the whole mess orange. It hangs in the mall, people walk under it without actually taking much notice, and the artist got six figures for this effort. I have a nomination for the next museum, city or mall seeking an Art Something for a special site: In the struggle back to consciousness from my recent knee- replacement surgery, I became aware of something benign that alternately caressed and embraced each leg and then released it. Both legs were angled out from my bottom, making a triangle with the foot of the bed. The operated leg had a bandage over the incision, an elastic bandage over this and a surgical stocking over all. It felt as if an elephant's leg had been attatched to me by mistake and was totally unmoveable. Both legs were encased in heavy gauge plastic "embracers." At the sound of an electronic gleep, they tightened around my legs till I almost cried, "Ouch," then released them. It was extremely strange to wake up to this sensation. The second day of my hospital stay a therapist took the plastic "embracer" off the operated leg and put said leg on a continuous passive flexion machine. I was fastened on this Stryker thing and I hated it. The plastic "embracer" was hung at the foot of my bed and faced me thus every moment of the remaining six days of my stay. It was hooked on the base bar of the overhead body-pulling-up contraption. It had to stay close because its other half was still fastened around my unoperated leg and they squeezed together at the sound of the gleep; I watched one "embrace" the air and felt the other "embrace" my leg. This continual massage is to ward off blood clots and poses no real problem until the patient can get up to go to the bathroom. Then getting off the Stryker and out of the "embracer" is the pits. If you do not get moving before nature calls too loudly, it will be too late. Previously described are several internationally known art sculptures, and I am sure it is easy to see how the "embracer" fits into this genre. Perhaps there are artists somewhere needing creative and innovative ideas to submit to committees-with-money for community, park, mall or museum beautification. I would be pleased to hear from them. A more detailed sketch of the "embracer" might be helpful, or we could go to the hospital together and study the real thing. I also discovered that they crunch up the "embracers" and throw them away once the patient is discharged from the hospital. The potential art possibilities of countless "embracers" hung on a high pole fairly boggles the mind. I wonder if the plastic could be spray-painted? Or perhaps a revolving wheel of light in rainbow colors would be more appropriate? My apologies to Michelangelo and Remington.
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