SCULPTURE ON THE MALL
FERGUSON, ANDREW
THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART SCULPTURE GARDEN An Illustrated Guide By Andrew Ferguson After several decades of planning, fund-raising, and other forms of bureaucratic back-and-forthing, the...
...Some of them are so unwhimsical it's not funny...
...I know it's a typewriter eraser," he said, as though addressing an imbecile...
...I found myself once again next to the man in the Orioles cap, who stood staring, displeased...
...What is it...
...I take the point...
...VII), which allows us to "encounter a multiplicity of animated compositions...
...he snapped at his wife, after several long moments of silence...
...Already, however, you can hear the carping of critics...
...It is by Claes Oldenburg...
...THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART SCULPTURE GARDEN An Illustrated Guide By Andrew Ferguson After several decades of planning, fund-raising, and other forms of bureaucratic back-and-forthing, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden opened the other day on the Mall, across the street from the National Archives in our nation's capital...
...This man lacked the spirit of whimsy with which it is best to approach many of the sculptures...
...As I stood before it, struggling with my own interpretation of this particular office supply (Fig...
...As art lovers know, Washington already had a sculpture garden...
...He disdained even to lean over to read the plaque himself...
...The appeal is chiefly cerebral and retinal," complained the Washington Post...
...V., except replicated fifteen times...
...in Dallas, Texas)—as can be seen in Fig...
...You see...
...Before I left the garden I stopped to assay Joel Shapiro's aptly titled Untitled (Fig...
...I'm pretty sure (Fig...
...He didn't know any better than we do what the fit is...
...Perhaps I should explain something about Fig...
...the man barked at her...
...The sculpture presents a giant eraser," the guidebook further explains, as if further explanation were necessary...
...VIII...
...IV The figure to the right is not part of Thinker...
...Otherwise you will be totally at sea, assuming you are not a college professor or Hilton Kramer...
...I took a break from my work and sat on one of the benches circling the fountain and suddenly felt uneasy, as though I were being looked at—although "looked at" isn't the right phrase...
...It is not shaped like a doughnut, for example...
...He stared at me...
...And what is the garden's total effect on the average visitor...
...Also, by the way, the linear elements converge to create the logo of the Circle K chain of convenience stores...
...it is shaped like a big garden—a six-acre rectangle of deciduous trees and winding walks and flowering shrubs...
...The only thing that bears even the remotest resemblance to a doughnut is a shimmering circular fountain in the middle of the garden...
...This post, in my opinion, gives a promising greeting to the visitor, a genuflection to the solemn, neoclassical lines of John Russell Pope's great West Building across Sixth Street...
...But what the hell is it...
...His face, as he turned it toward me, was dark: the face of a taxpayer, its linear elements converging to create a sense of strong emotion, ready to explode outward (Fig...
...This is Aurora by Mark di Suvero (Fig...
...The boy was thus making his own statement on the nature of postmodern whimsy—an act of post-postmodern meta-whimsy, if I'm keeping this straight...
...The garden, complains one, represents Andrew Ferguson a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Beyond Puellae is the work that many critics are already hailing as the garden's masterpiece...
...There is also a sculpture by Joan Miro with the word "Eclair" in the title, but this has nothing to do with baked goods of any kind...
...The new sculpture garden is superior in almost every respect...
...Their "repetitious presentation has been regarded as the artist's personal response to totalitarianism...
...III), an elderly man in an Orioles cap and his wife stopped dead in their tracks...
...VI), and if it is not the finest of the garden's works it is undeniably the heaviest: "eight tons of steel over three diagonal supports combine massive scale with elegance of proportion," as the guidebook puts it...
...It's a typewriter eraser," I said, butting in...
...Hence Typewriter Eraser Scale X, in which the artist used stainless steel and fiberglass to make a very large typewriter eraser...
...A pleasanter place than the new garden is not to be found in all of Washington...
...This is probably why the artist has, as you'll notice, cut their heads off...
...Not all the pieces in the sculpture garden are whimsical...
...Behind me, in a stand of linden trees, was Magdalena Abakanowicz's Puellae (Girls), a group of thirty bronze figures that are three-feet high and look exactly like Fig...
...IV), which is a piece of bronze representing a big bunny rabbit sitting on a rock, thinking...
...Several of the linear elements converge within a central circular hub and then explode outward, imparting tension...
...But this is not true, to judge by my own experience...
...The guidebook, available at the garden entrance, explains: "One of Oldenburg's favorite office supplies was a typewriter eraser...
...The woman shrugged...
...It especially helps if you keep consulting the guidebook...
...What's it called...
...Flanagan, says the guidebook, was "reacting against the formal, constructed metal sculpture to which he was exposed in art school...
...It's confusing, but all are easily transmutable into my own favored medium—Pilot Varsity Disposable Fountain Pen on Reporter's Notebook (Reorder # 25-280, from American Pad and Paper Co...
...It is a little boy clowning around for his parents, who were taking his picture...
...As when viewing any work of modern art, you must have with you at all times a piece of paper that explains what you are viewing...
...The dominant emotion is the virtual absence of any strong emotion...
...The guidebook doesn't mention this...
...he barked...
...II, which offers an intensely personal interpretation of the neoclassical post and wrought-iron fencing at the Northwest entrance to the garden...
...a "jumble of styles," with works cast in "diverse media" like stainless steel, cinder block, and fiberglass...
...Entering the garden, one is instantly confronted with discordant examples of neo-classicism, homey landscaping in the British picturesque style, and the something-or-otherism of our modern sculptors...
...Untitled," she said...
...It's hard to believe, looking at Thinker, that Barry Flanagan went to art school, but that's why we have guidebooks...
...A case in point: Barry Flanagan's Thinker on a Rock (Fig...
...You see...
...It lies on the other side of the Mall, in a sunken terrace next to the Hir-shhorn Museum, which is shaped like a doughnut...
...But the first piece of sculpture that the visitor encounters alters the mood decisively...
...He also lacked the guidebook...
...She bent down towards the little card and then straightened up...
...These figures can be arranged in any configuration," says the guidebook, but here they are placed facing the fountain—although "facing" isn't the right word either, since, again, they don't have heads...
Vol. 4 • June 1999 • No. 36
