Another one by Richard Serra, Joe at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Yes, Joe is Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., the late publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Serra's friend and patron. It is in a courtyard, not visible from the street, but its huge size (13.5 feet, 4 meters tall, spiraled inward) makes its physical presence all the more impressive. You can see a view from above at https://pulitzerarts.org/collection/ (scroll down a bit).
From a post in November, looking up at the sunset sky from within the spiral of Richard Serra's monumental steel sculpture, Joe. It is located in the courtyard shared by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and our Contemporary Art Museum. Not to everyone's taste but it's my favorite of the year.
And so to 2024. May the people of Gaza, Israel, Ukraine--and you--find peace. May Trump go away forever and may the skies be clear for the total eclipse in April. May artificial intelligence not become overlord and may Twitter/X fold. May we have enough water and shelter from the heat. May we learn our lessons, so many lessons.
A silhouette of Richard Serra's Joe with the Scottish Rite Masonic temple looming behind. I'm not sure what goes on in there these days. If you look carefully you can see a couple of lights on in the building but the Masons aren't such a big deal any more.
Inside the spiral of Joe, the grand, deliberately rusting Richard Serra sculpture seen in my post yesterday. Near sunset in the plaza between the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
Seen in the courtyard connecting our Contemporary Art Museum with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. This is Richard Serra's large sculpture, Joe, dedicated to Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., the one-time publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and great patron of the arts. Serra and Pulitzer were close friends. The work is a giant spiral of Cor 10 steel that feels like it is sucking you inside.
The building in the background is the grandiose Scottish Rite Masonic Temple.
With trash? Probably a lot, one way or the other. Another enigmatic sign from the exhibit in Park-Like.
Besides the performance of songbirdsongs, there is another art installation in Park-Like. It is described as a group of sculptures by Chloë Bass, "inspired by public wayfinding signage posing question[s] that explore human emotions ranging from compassion and desire to anxiety and loss." It's sometimes visually arresting but the concept isn't new. I prefer the pioneering work in this genre by Jenny Holzer, https://projects.jennyholzer.com/, and Barbara Kruger, http://www.artnet.com/artists/barbara-kruger/.
Another scene from the performance of John Luther Adams' songbirdsongs at Park-Like, across from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. A piccolo is a likely candidate to imitate small birds. Part of the effect, though was the musicians were scattered around the garden, moving from place to place. It resembled the changing soundscape of a forest.
We went back to the small. exquisite Pulitzer Arts Foundation on Saturday. It was the next-to-last day of the show about American artist, Terry Adkins, someone we had not known. The architecture of the place commands as much attention as the work on display.
These horns closely resemble dungchen, massive horns used in Tibetan Buddhist practice. Adkins and his colleagues sometimes performed on them - it must have been quite an experience. There was to be a demonstration during the exhibition but it was canceled due to the pandemic.
You must walk just over 360 degrees through the spiral to reach the center of Joe. The visitor arrives at a nearly circular enclosure. There is plenty of room but you might feel some panic about being able to escape over the high walls. (The museum staff won't let you bring in a grappling hook and rope.) Of course, the way you came in is still there but the space can give you the feeling of being trapped with plenty of space.
I looked through the archives and found one overeposed shot in which you can look down and see the overall shape. https://tinyurl.com/yyfx32ap
The courtyard of the Pulitzer contains Richard Serra monumental sculpture Joe, named for his friend and patron Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. You can hardly take a bad picture of it on a clear day but it's also impossible to view the whole unless you find an elevated viewpoint. Maybe that's part of the point. It is made of bent slabs of COR TEN steel, solid as rock but with a lovely rusted patina. The walls are at least twice as high as me and I'm medium-tall. You wander into the curve as if into a maze of light, dark and space. I think we'll see what you get to tomorrow, depending on what happens overnight.
This painting was in the background of yesterday's photo, Ellsworth Kelly's Blue Black. It is one of the two large works that have been in the Pulitzer since it opened. The other is Richard Serra's monumental steel construction Joe, which we will come to shortly.
Kelly's work is often super-minimalistic color field painting. It leaves some people shaking their heads and others in rapture. Kelly, though, could be a bit of a prig about it. When the place opened in 2001, there was a public discussion at the symphony hall with Kelly, Serra and Emily Pulitzer. Serra was warm and funny. Kelly was a bit arrogant and uptight. He claimed that when Blue Back was installed he could tell from down the hall if it was a quarter-inch out of position. The audience laughed. Serra laughed. Now you can look at it for yourself.
The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is small enough that an exhibition is often about the work of a single artist. The current show is devoted to Terry Adkins, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Adkins. His oeuvre and resume are spectacular. I wondered why I'd never heard of him. Perhaps for racial reasons, but he certainly made an impact on the art world.
This work is called Last Trumpet. Adkins used sousaphone and trombone bells attached to tubes of cast brass. You can actually play them.
The architecture of the Pulitzer is decidedly spare. It was designed by the multi award-winning Japanese designer Tadao Ando, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadao_Ando. The walls are featureless concrete slabs that direct the viewers attention entirely to the art work. (For similar reasons, there are no placards on the wall describing the art. There is always a brochure to read after the visitor engages the the work.) Ando makes ingenious use of outside light and water to create spacial and material balance.
Visitors can step outside into courtyard. It contains a site-specific monumental sculpture that we will come to. Last weekend the simplicity had fiery accents.
Mrs. C and I paid a visit yesterday to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, a small, exquisite museum not well known outside STL. The plan was conceived by the late Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and son of the person who founded the prize, along with his wife, Emily Rauh Pulitzer. The building and its contents were based on their fortune and collection.
We will see something about the unique architecture and current show in following days. For now, I'll note that the place is open Thursday through Sunday by reservation only. You get a timed ticket and up to four people have the place to themselves for 45 minutes. It wasn't enough. We'll go back before the current show ends.
