ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCULPTURE - TWAIN

 

Richard Serra's Twain is a controversial work. It's big, 12 foot / 3.7 meter slabs of semi-rusted Cor-ten steel taking up most of a city block. When it was installed in 1981 there was a huge negative reaction (something Serra is no stranger to). I love it, but it is a pretty intellectual concept. There is a helpful discussion at https://racstl.org/public-art/twain/ .                 

Vise

Richard Serra's Twain puts the squeeze on the Civil Courts Building. I've shown it here a number of times before. Most people ignore it now but it generated a lot of hate when it was installed. I kneel before it.

It's gonna be a crazy but wonderful weekend. Up to Chicago today. Son Andy will be married on Saturday to the simply delightful Claire Blouin, who knows how to keep him in line. None of this wedding-industrial complex stuff. The rehearsal dinner is tonight in their back yard with Popeye's fried chicken and a keg. I'm the wedding photographer with daughter Emily working the second camera. We'll have days and days of this, I'm sure.                             

Every Picture Tells A Story

Found just inside the plate steel walls of the Twain sculpture. I invite readers to tell a little story, just two or three sentences, about how and why these objects came to rest here.              

Twisted

I made it back downtown with the fisheye lens. To complicate matters, I shot HDRs with it, something I've never tried. 

The top image is an old (by American standards) courthouse that gets great light in the late afternoon reflected from the windows of the building across the street. You can see a bit of it in the extreme warp at the top left.

The second picture was taken in exactly the same place as yesterday's lead pic, just different lens and digital technique. Note the weird digital noise outside the circle of the image. That area was theoretically dark, as the fisheye should have kept all the light within the circle. What you see in there was created by Photomatix, the HDR software. Kinda cool. I blacked it out in the top photo and left it in the second. Which do you prefer?

I've been terrible about comments. Too damn much work, with some special business planning issues on the table right now. On the current schedule, retirement is 43 months away. Maybe I should start a countdown clock.                                    

Lie On Your Back And Look At The Sky

Screw on a wide angle lens and a polarizing filter. Put yourself right in the middle of Richard Serra's Twain downtown. Be willing to get dirty. Push the shutter button a few times.

I want to go back and try this again with my fisheye lens.                                 

Balancing Act

.

So I was doing my usual downtown walkabout on Sunday when I noticed a young man sitting on top of one of the slabs of Richard Serra's Twain. The massive steel construction has been featured on this blog before.

The individual sections are at least 3 meters high. Lacking any Spider Man talents, I didn't understand how he got up there. But as I rounded the sculpture I saw him up on top, walking the edge that couldn't be more than 5 cm wide and crossing the gaps between the plates. My first instinct was to run away in terror (to the extent that I can run) before witnessing what could be severe injuries. Then I thought what the hell, whipped up my telephoto lens and shot these. The boy saw me and called out, "Hey, mister, nice camera!"

Thanks. Nice performance, too.

Matt Holliday looks through Kieth Haring's eye on Downtown St. Louis 365 today.

2-Fer

.

Downtown St. Louis 365 and St. Louis Daily Photo have a two for the price of one special today. These are a pair of view of views of the Civil Courts Building, seen here yesterday, through the portals of Ricard Serra's massive steel sculpture, Twain. While the Civil Courts is a jumble of ancient styles, Twain is at once much more simple and difficult. Certain people howled for its removal after it was installed in 1982. It stayed, thank heavens. The opposite result happened in New York when Serra's 1981 work, Tilted Arc, was removed from Foley Square in Lower Manhattan and carted off for scrap. So we get a one-up on the grand center of art.

Another advantage of a 2-fer is that I can use the same text on both blogs, more or less. Here's the image you can see on Downtown St. Louis 365: