Visual Art Currently Hanging
posted by August 19 at 10:59 AM
onWhile I wait my turn for the library to lend me the new book, “Spiral Jetta”—a travelogue of the earth art of the American West—I ask you: why don’t any art pilgrims go to Mount Rushmore? Where’s the love?
Not just that, but Rushmore is the very prototype of a contemporary art project, conceived and designed by a big personality, then executed by a horde of assistants while the artist is off doing other things. I’ve never seen it, but would love to.
At Rushmore, Gutzon Borglum was the big artist personality.
To give some more thought to the unloved Rushmore, go to Matthew Buckingham’s current show at the Henry Art Gallery, where you’ll find this 1923 declaration by South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson, who conceived the Rushmore project:
“God only makes a Michelangelo or a Gutzon Borglum once in a thousand years.”
Comments
i went to see it with a group of people back in 1975 and we all thought it the silliest goddamn thing we had ever seen. the pictures are waaaay better than the actual thing.
Mount Rushmore reminds me of all the gnome-y rocks with eyes in Return to Oz.
My view of Mt. Rushmore is forever linked with the memory of driving first through Custer, SD and seeing, at the town line, the gigantic pro-life billboard featuring a destroyed fetus.
maybe it's the whole Borglum was a racist asshole thing and Mt Rushmore is a work of art to be sure, but it's also a rather unpleasant piece of white, male, American political imperialism.
and the whole, sucking up to Teddy Roosevelt thing is really irritating...
Go see Crazy Horse instead and educate yourself on the history of the area. Mt Rushmore might not seem so impressive then.
Both Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse are on my Bucket List.
crazy horse memorial made me cry. the story behind and his refusal to take any government money really moves me.
i went there as a child and thought that this will never get done. i went back as adult and the face had been completed and i was just blown away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Horse_Memorial
Mount Rushmore definitely makes my Top Ten Famous Things That Utterly Disappoint and Depress list.
It's so ugly and preposterous, it's *fascinating*. Also, it's a lot smaller than all the pictures I'd seen since before I was born led me to believe.
Driving through the otherwise-beautiful Black Hills, passing busload after busload of senile oldies and retarded suburbanites, I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there.
(ps: the Crazy Horse statue is equally hideous and unforgivable)
Re: the New Yorker's review. I thought the rods were copper, not Stainless steel, in "Lightning Field".
You fuckers are crazy--Mt. Rushmore was BADASS! My favorite sculpture in the world...Next is Duchamps wheel...
My spouse just crossed the country and saw the thing.
I got a t-shirt.
Mark, we looked really hard to find you the perfect t-shirt!
It's a good one. I'm going to wear it tomorrow and feel very patrio9tic.
I went to Rushmore a couple years ago. It seemed a lot smaller in real life. And driving up towards it you encounter some of the most freakishly touristy stuff ever. The promenade toward the view of the mountain seemed fascistic.
Lucky for you complainers it's in South Dakota and not carved into the Cascades.
It is an interesting little abstract exercise to rethink Mt. Rushmore in the context of Jeff Coons or Claus Oldenburg or somesuch.
Rushmore was a lot more fun when I got to see it as a kid in 1988. The Park Service totally rebuilt the visitor's facilities in the late 90's, but in 1988 the place hadn't been touched in decades.
There's more than just the mountain--there's the visitor's center, artist's studio-cum-museum, footpaths through the mountain forest...all kinds of stuff to explore.
When I was a kid, every detail of the place was perfectly preserved from decades past. Even the cafeteria menu and the trinkets for sale in the souvenir shop were exactly as they would have been in the 1950's. It was like a rare and completely charming opportunity to actually step into the past.
Of course, this reliving of a Brady Bunch vacation was heightened considerably by the fact that we traveled in a 1968 Plymouth Satellite station wagon. The kind with the way-back seat that unfolded to face the rear window.
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