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I often wonder - not enough to pursue it though - who pays for all those ugly statues outside big banks, big offices, etc. I thought it was mostly an American thing, but it’s common in Korea too. They’re usually quite abstract and, to my eye, quite shabby and ugly. I assume money is being laundered or the artist is well-connected.
When I go to work, I take a short pedestrian tunnel underneath the street. A few months ago, this tunnel was “beautified” (that’s what the promotional sign promised) by a paint job. Here’s part of one side. The walkway is too narrow to capture its full majesty.
You probably get the drift, but here’s the other side (as if the old brick tile wasn’t hideous enough):
I know what you’re thinking- “How must it look when walking into the 지하 길 (jiha gil)?”
This ugliness was produced by machines. NOTHING was done by hand. It happened over a couple of days, and they even had to start it over once. There were about five or six guys there with projectors and tarps…And they didn’t even clean the floor! On BOTH walls, there is an explanation of this “artwork.” I ran one of them through a translator for all Ricochet fine-arts buffs.
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If it's outside big banks and big offices, then the customers paid for it.
If it's outside public buildings, then taxpayers paid for it.
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Before I read the part about them not cleaning up I was going to say the money would have been better spent on power washing the floor.
My inferior intellect cannot grok the explanation
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We had city and state ordinances that gave builders advantages if they paid for public art. Little of it is of much value, but at least private builders are sensitive to the impact on the future marketability of their project, so they (usually) don't allow eyesores. Public art that's on government-owned property is usually not as good.
The subway system in Los Angeles has fairly decent artwork. For one thing, there isn't too much of it. For another, and this was remarkable then (the Nineties, when it was built) and now: it's not political. It's quirky, puzzling, sometimes pointless, but thank God it isn't all murals of oppressed peasants and bloodstained Anglo tyrants.
There are a few hard fails. The Green line light rail stops were built when the defense and electronics manufacturing industries were booming along it. With the end of the Cold War, big parts of industrial L.A. became ghost towns. (that's why Space X is in Hawthorne), but their train stops are still decorated with now-outdated symbols of the aerospace and video businesses that were once there.
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Spot on assumption.
Also, as is said these days, ...
Embrace the power of "and".
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