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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Visual Art Never Was Hanging

Posted by Jen Graves on Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 2:42 PM

Jeff Koons and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are still working on putting up outside the museum's entrance what may be the most expensive museum commission ever. It's a life-sized replica of a steam train that will actually emit sound and steam, suspended from an actual construction crane, and it's supposed to look like this.

This morning I was out visiting Kristen Ramirez, the artist-in-residence on the Fremont Bridge, and she had in the bridge tower with her a pamphlet from the Seattle Arts Commission's 1991 project In Public: Seattle, which brought together a group of local and far-flung artists to do temporary and permanent installations funded by the percent-for-art money that was generated by Seattle Art Museum's then-new Robert Venturi building.

Turns out Chris Burden's proposal was to hang a real trawling vessel from the front of the museum like a trophy. Evidently local artist Cris Bruch, who also had a project in the exhibition (involving a weird unfinished roadway that looks like it went right into the water), was the one who drove Burden around looking for vessels.

Burden's dangling fishing boat never materialized. Would it have been more interesting than Koons's train? We'll never know. I wonder what they talked about in the car, though...

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Now, all we need in addition to the train, is some bike riders to save the world for one of the floats at the Fremont Solstice Parade and all will be well.

Well, except for the tuna ... Bluefin are rapidly disappearing, and coal trains won't save them, even if they don't serve em up at Blue C Sushi.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on June 9, 2009 at 2:55 PM

@1 -- wow the connection between trains and tuna.

Clearly that was one of those "your brain on acid" infomercials.

Mighty convincing, too.

Posted by PC on June 9, 2009 at 3:35 PM

Aww, just for that I'm going to register my FB user name as PC just to mess you up.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on June 9, 2009 at 3:46 PM

I think the more interesting question might be whether the boat would have been more interesting than Hammerin' Man. If memory serves, there was lots of support for the boat, but Hammerin' Man prevailed with the strong backing of certain key SAM board members.

Posted by fixo on June 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM

I think all are fucking awesome. Fond memories of Expo 86 in Vancouver, and the giant Highway-O-Transportation sculpture that included a real U-boat along with other cars, trucks, trains, bicycles, and other vehicles, all painted white on a giant free-form road sculpture.

It boggled my mind at the time... what? They put a real submarine on it? I wanted to hack it and climb inside the submarine (but never got the chance).

Posted by Dr_Awesome on June 9, 2009 at 7:28 PM

If the greatest distinction your concept has is "most expensive museum commission ever" its time to reconsider your concept. Perhaps even your career.

Posted by Big Unshaven Man on June 10, 2009 at 1:26 PM