Weird (and Wonderful) Public Art

Should all art look like something? That is, should it represent something? I don't think so. Whether it's visual art, music, poetry, or statuary, I think that there's enough room in the world for all kinds of art, from the representational variety to "art for art's sake." (I write a bit about that here. Also see here.)

Triggering these thoughts is a post by Ann Althouse, who published her own photograph of the big--untitled--Picasso statue that adorns--and defines--Daley Plaza in Chicago. It roused these thoughts and memories from me:

I remember the controversy that surrounded the installation of the Picasso sculpture in 1967. I went to Chicago for a visit with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, who lived in nearby DuPage County, just two years later. It was the weirdest and, to my fifteen year old mind, most wonderful piece of public art I'd ever seen.

Nine years after the Picasso was installed in Daley Plaza, we had a similar controversy over a piece of public sculpture in my hometown of Columbus. A group of local patrons made it possible for the Columbus Museum of Art to purchase what I believe was then one of two renderings of Henry Moore's 'Large Oval with Points.' (A perfunctory search of the web indicates that there are a few more of them around today.) The site chosen was a parcel of land, once the location of the old Franklin County Court House, then being developed into a small urban green space.

I remember that everybody seemed to have an opinion of the piece. My wife and I loved it, for example. Friends of ours, people I would have expected to have been enthusiastic about the sculpture, hated it. (But on their honeymoon trip to Paris, they sent us a postcard to say that there they had seen a piece that bore a "pointed" resemblance to something in Columbus.)

Today, the Moore sculpture seems nondescript and invisible. Not so the Picasso piece and not just because it's much larger. It's just a great piece of art. Why, I don't know, except that like all exceptional art, it captures you...

What do you think, does art always have to represent something? Or is it enough that it either reflects an artist's passion or engenders passion in us?

Leave your comments.

(By the way, it may be that those Columbus patrons also had a sense of humor. One of the most identifiable landmarks in the city is the Oval, the central campus green at Ohio State.)

[On passion, see here.]