In all the time I readied my new camera for Calder’s Teodelapio, I never imagined this. (Ground under repair belongs on the links.)
Did Calder ever anticipate this mess either, do you imagine? Surely a sculptor with his technological mastery must have known.
That someday it would come to this. Asphalt stinks when it’s poured. And it crumbles under the pounding of cars, the fissures of ice.
How much of the artistic genius in a monumental sculpture comes from the industrial materials and the technological mechanics of it?
Damned if I know. Walter Benjamin wrote “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Or so I’ve been told.
The issue I asked myself, coming out of the station when we arrived, was much simpler: Is the construction scene funny or sad?
Neither, I suppose, is the pragmatic answer. Both, the measure of a mood swing. Only what have they done with my photo op?
According to the rules of golf, I would get a free drop. But where do I place myself and remain while moving no closer to the hole?
Surely, that now is the focal point of the shot? Not the steadfast monument to art, long standing and still to be. But the makeshift work.
“Ground under repair” says it all. And so, while I shall be heading off soon to test my eye, I leave an assignment if you like to play.
Get your bearings with this collection of last year’s shots. When you are ready, compose your photo of the ground beneath his feat.
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- Coming
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- Going
