It was a bit creepier earlier today when the father was looking at the bound son.

of course, closer would be too queer, and you certainly don't want dad to have a real dick and balls

Seattle, still land of blue laws and prudes in charge of art

They aren't statues frozen in time and space, they are beacons. The rest of the world moves by too fast. Look at the loss and longing on their faces. What have we become? What have we become?

This two figure combo is full blown Victoriana, which even Queen Victoria would not have liked. She loved her Prince Albert and had a host of kids

Dan, oh I mean Dad, has a nice ass at least

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_(1980)

This piece is about the sad communication divide that almost always exists between fathers and sons, even in good relationships.

I dunno, maybe I'm the only one who sees it. Any other dads out there who also like this work?

pps- I've never disagreed with you so comprehensively, Fnarf. Oh and the "brown turds" are seats, right? And part of a separate installation.

we're a city on a hill, indeed...

It's the circle of life Simba...

What I find creepy about it is the horrible execution. When a father is reaching out to his child, he doesn't stand straight up with his arms sticking out awkwardly. If those statues in any way conveyed real human interaction and movement, it wouldn't be creepy at all.

These pics really do a disservice to the work because it's not the same without the obfuscating water flow. This is not supposed to be a happy father/son piece of art, it's supposed to be at best a melancholy, and at worst deeply sad, look at familial failure.

Why is it heartbreaking? I don't understand the unavailability or what you're seeing -- but I'm interested.

"Banal" is one of those all purpose pejoratives, the inanimate equivilent of "douchebag." Boy, you and I don't often disagree, but when we do... uffda.

Non, the idea here is that usually one or both figures are obscured by a circular curtain of fountain jets. So you see the Dad, reaching out to his son who's behind a curtain of water. Then you get both curtains. Then you get just the son, but the Dad is behind a curtain of water. I don't remember if they're *ever* both visible, but if so it's rare, and the whole cycle takes ~1 hr so you spend many minutes with one or both figures obscured.

I *do* hate the giant traffic cone, though.

Maybe that was the idea, but I just don't see any tragedy or especially any humanity in it. I consider that to be a major failure on the artist's part. No representation of a human form should look that stiff and inhuman. If Bourgeois can't do better, then she shouldn't do it at all.

and, for the record, the distopian world of 1984 seems to actually have been the petri dish from which atrocities like the olympic sculpture park were hatched. if you've ever been to the former soviet bloc, you'd notice they love their shitty public art - theirs was a tribute to the tyranny of communism - ours are a tribute to the tyranny of capitalism.

but that's ok.