As regular readers know, chuckling is a fan of waterfalls. But you, mythical regular reader, also know that chuckling is less than enamored with all that is fake.
So how will I react to “The New York City Waterfalls,” the new big time art installation in New York by the artist Olafur Eliasson. We'll see. I saw all four waterfalls today, but will withhold opinion until I've seen them at night and at least six or eight more times.
Regardless of what I ultimately think about them as art, I'm happy as hell to see them as public art. This is the kind of thing that puts cities like New York and Paris over the top. Sure, you can look at how much these things cost and say the money would be better spent going to battered or starving children, but realistically you can look at the budget and see so many things that should be cut to fund all the worthiest of goals before doing away with major public art projects. In the real world, these art projects are not costing other worthy programs anything. And hopefully a few battered children will marvel at the beautiful waterfalls, or gates, whatever, and dream a different dream.
On a completely different topic, New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg let out a particularly stinky fart at the opening ceremony:
I like Old Masters, I like big sculptures,” the mayor mused, adding, “To me great art is something that I couldn’t do myself. To me great art is something that tells a story.
Ummm, okay. Bloomy likes it old and big. It's your money, bub, you gets whats you pays for. Big art for big money. But remember the all important flip side my friends. Big art ain't necessarily great and small art necessarily can be and when you're feeling blue don't forget that big money can't stop great art. Not all the time.
Anyway, I'll post some photos eventually.
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