Steel Sculpture...Are They Kidding?????

welder689 · Oct 13, 2006

It's funny what some people consider "art".

There is a new "steel sculpture" on a local college campus called "Red Squares".

The "artist" or "sculptor" or whatever he calls him/her self made three seperate squares out of square tubing (I'm thinking it's maybe 2"-3"). The squares are probably 10'x10' and are standing straight up. One is in back, and the other two are side-by-side in the front. Each one has two legs that are sunk into the ground.

The squares are painted red.

They even have a bronze placque to commemorate this.

Here's a picture:

I just built a 6'x10' utility trailer that took a hell of a lot more thought than this crap.

Maybe I should mount it on a pedestal and call it art.

toadjammer · Oct 13, 2006

There is alot of that even commisioned works. At the h.s. I went to we had three triangle progressivly larger and the bottom right hand corners overlapped but the larger shown past the smaller so you could see "the first part as it develops to the whole" it was suppose to be insirational or representative of the three grade and how they grow and go hand in hand. Same kind of crap.

rusty ripple · Oct 14, 2006

i believe the polite thing to say is "it doesn't speak to me" just because you don't understand it doesn't make it crap. art is a tricky thing to understand if you're not in the art world. i used to rent space from an artist couple. they were both sculptors and i couldn't make sense either way of their work. it was a long time before i finally admitted i had no idea what i was looking at or even supposed to be looking for in a sculpture. they didn't take offense to this but explained that essentially art is a means of communication. trying to communicate anything the artist feels like communicating, the feeling of a breeze, pain of a jilted lover anything at all. your trailer on a pedestal in response to the squares would definitely qualify as art. in theory any piece that you walk away from saying this is dumbest waste of time is a failure because it failed to communicate what ever the artist was trying to convey. but then you get into a whole argument about "dumbing down" for the masses, artsy fartsy types are an incredibly pretentious crowd and many of them thrive on being misunderstood. you really don't want to engage an artist in this argument.
this piece? i dunno, maybe a nod to red square in russia? saying something about college campuses being totalatarian institutions? i'm guessing, i never got into the art scene, the only upside to artists seems to be that the girls are often, how shall i say this, free spirited.

welder689 · Oct 15, 2006

I guess it doesn't speak to me then.

bob308 · Oct 15, 2006

it speaks loaud and clear to me. waste of tax payers money. those 3 pices of tubing cost more then if they were made a good fab shop.

aametalmaster · Oct 15, 2006

Well, if they were "Blue" it would be a good Nationwide Ins ad. I can't see it either...Bob

Dirtdobber · Oct 15, 2006

I bet if you read that bronze plaque closely it says something like
"This Red Square Bicycle Rack was donated by ....."

Peter from Holland · Oct 15, 2006

The ART is not in designing and/or making it but in selling it

welder689 · Oct 15, 2006

I did a little more research. This sculpture was made by a professor in visual arts.

Racer Al · Oct 15, 2006

OK, there you have it. I was going to suggest that it was a student work. Art on academic campuses generally have some link to the institution.

stephen thomas · Oct 15, 2006

It's all in how you look at it...or who represents you. I've been looking at a lot of the scrap generated around here, and musing about the possibilities. Even SWMBO has suggested we mount this "work" "Circles on the way to Church" in the hallway in our house....

The church window is worth a few dollars when it is completed. But if I only had Robert Rauschenberg's agent, the spoilboard could be worth tens of thou$sand$!

smt

Ries · Oct 16, 2006

I make sculpture for a living. And I would be the first to say this one is pretty crummy.
When I was in High School, I had a teacher who told us that 95% of anything was crap.
I apply this to artists, as well as just about any other field in life.
So most of em just arent that good.

That said, one of the things that makes art interesting is that there is no "RIGHT AND WRONG". Everybody gets to make their own decisions, and everybodys opinion is equally right.
So only one person has to like a sculpture- the guy who made it. If he is really lucky, and this happens about 1% of the time, two people like it, and the other one buys it.

jkilroy · Oct 16, 2006

It sure doesn't speak to me, but I CAN smell it, and it smells like CRAP!

jackal · Oct 18, 2006

I would take them and put the welding screens back on them , then move 'em back to the technical dept. for the welders.

Jackal

welder689 · Oct 19, 2006

"I would take them and put the welding screens back on them , then move 'em back to the technical dept. for the welders."

Hah, hah! Good one, Jackal...I LIKE IT! I knew that they reminded me of SOMETHING!!!!!

JamesM · Oct 20, 2006

College campuses are full of self-aggrandizing "artsy types" who want to skip all the drudgery and dedication that is required to properly nurture and develop real artistic talent. They want to pretend to be Jackson Pollock and smear a bunch of paint on a campus, as if by obligation to not think, and instead, to create a poor rip off of something that was done in the 50s. Even worse are the kids who create horribly-cliched political art while thinking they are in some way original or edgy...Oooh, a 50's June Cleaver apron smeared in blood and covered in coat hangers! Oooh, portraits of General Lee and Grant surrounded by a ring of chopsticks and fortune cookies!

Bad art gives me a headache.

rayman · Nov 3, 2006

Let's see now.....Red Squares....a college campus.... Where eles is the a "red square" in this world? That's right a Communist country. So, if this is the analagy the artist was trying to "communicate", then this is a home of communists that are three times worse than the original. :eek:

My vote is that its another waste of taxpayer money. That kind of simplistic stuff belongs in a kindergarden classroom, not a college campus.

slim pickens · Nov 3, 2006

Reminds me of a timely saying "Never mistake lack of talent for genius". That thing looks like 100% crap. We have a similarly bad looking "piece of art" near the engineering building where I went to school. Some construction company donated a bunch of I-beam drops and paid some schmuck "artist" to create "art". It looks like a red steel christmas tree stood up on its head. They tried to use a bunch of different joint types. It made me shiver every time I walked by it to think how many cute co-eds were FURTHER turned off by engineers after seeing that piece of crap.
This "art" is what we get as a result of a society that coddles all "artists" when some of them should be starving based on lack of talent.

Rick Rowlands · Nov 3, 2006

Hey Slim sounds like you went to Youngstown State. We have one of those I beam sculptures here on campus.

CrazySim · Nov 7, 2006

Think JKilroy summed it up.

I can smell it all the way over here.

ATB

Sim

Steel Sculpture...Are They Kidding?????

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