It's The Itchy and Scratchy Show

Does anyone remember the Itchy and Scratchy segment on The Simpsons? They were the extremely violent cat and mouse (mostly the mouse) cartoon characters whose bloody antics made Bart and Lisa howl with laughter. Lots of us laughed along, ashamed of ourselves.

One demonstration at the eagle festival featured carving wooden sculpture with chainsaws. The sculptors called themselves Itchy Brothers Chainsaw Art. The odd name MUST be a reference to Itchy and Scratchy. This wooden eagle has amazing detail. But, unlike the cartoon characters, these guys were very conscious of safety. They were enclosed in a wire dome to keep chips from flying out. That's why the picture is a bit fuzzy.      

The Vision Thing

At the end of his years as vice president, George H. W. Bush was planning to run for president. People challenged his ability to see the big picture on issues facing the country. Someone suggested he take a couple of days off to figure out his position. "Oh," Bush scoffed, "the vision thing." The comment stuck with him.

So, another monumental statue at the Soldiers Memorial with a noble but vague theme. Reminds me of the fact that I've worn glasses since second grade.           

Courage

I need to pay more attention to the beautifully restored Soldiers Memorial downtown. It opened 80 years ago as a World War I monument, eventually included later wars, but in time got pretty run down. A group raised $30 million to bring it back to its original state and add additional exhibition space. It was so crowded on re-opening day that I'll have to come back to see it all.

Four of these big sculptures flank the north and south entrances. The word courage is thrown around a lot but sometimes I wonder what it really means. Maybe it's a high tolerance for risk.       

Your Moment Of Zen

As Jon Stewart used to say. An unusual piece of sculpture at the Pulitzer, a disk filled with sand, maybe 3 or 4 meters wide, with a rotating blade stretching across the diameter. One side cuts precise grooves, the other makes everything smooth. It seems like an obvious reference to Japanese zen gardens but here the Buddhist concept of impermanence is twisted. Everything changes and everything remains the same. Deep.

Joe

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation is one of the gems of St. Louis. It's not very big and a bit out of the way. It was founded by Joseph Pulitzer III, grandson of Joseph Pulitzer, the New York newspaper baron, and his wife, Emily.  He was for many years the publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Joe and Emily amassed one of the greatest collections of contemporary art in the U.S. The foundation is a center of research and a small, exquisite museum, designed in a very spare style by Japanese architect Tadao Ando.

The Pulitzers were good friends of the sculptor Richard Serra. The courtyard of the Foundation contains his massive work Joe, dedicated to the patron's memory. It is a spiral of rust-red steel plate, concerned with space, scale and sky, holding delights around every bend. The last picture gives an overview.     

It's Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature

Americans and probably Canadians of a certain age will immediately recognize the TV ad that made this phrase an earworm 40 years ago. The idea and image, like any icon, has many interpretations. This one was outside of Pere Marquette Lodge. It's not up my alley. Mom looks like she is exhausted from holding her giant mutant bunny.        

Daniel Boone Asks For A Handout

Americans, or at least those my age, all know of the legendary frontiersman, Daniel Boone. He opened trails from Virginia and North Carolina to Kentucky and Tennessee, leading to significant migration. After major losses in land deals in Kentucky, he ended up in what is now St. Charles County, Missouri, just across the Missouri River from St. Louis County. It was Spanish territory when he arrived, then French, and became part of the United States in the massive 1804 Louisiana Purchase.

So now St. Charles makes a buck off him any way it can. The statue above was down the street from the ice carving festival. It was designed by local sculptor Harry Weber, who seems to get all of these kinds of jobs around here. He did the statue of Chuck Berry seen here earlier in the month. Boone looks like he is entreating passers-by for a little help with his Kentucky debts.        

Player's Choice

There are so many more pictures I could edit from Artica but I have to wrap it up sometime and get to the closing bonfire. For today, a couple more unusual sculptures. The top one seems to be aimed at attracting children, the bottom one gamblers. Nothing is for sale at Artica, so you couldn't start a giant craps game in that field.         

Greater Good

Doors to . . . where? The old wood and Gothic lettering suggest a church entrance but then what lies behind? The words scattered on the ground may suggest an answer. There is a lot going on in this world to be afraid of.       

Light And Dark

More cruising the work on display at Artica. 

The figures above have words torn into the green fabric but even up close I couldn't read much of it. 

The diptych in the second photo represents the scene right behind me as I took the shot - grassy fields with the wooden structure of Our Lady of Artica (more about which soon), a single Doric column standing there for god-knows-why and the old Cotton Belt Railroad freight terminal, whose long east wall has been turned into a mural by Artica founders Hap Phillips and Nita Turnage. Looks quite Fauvist to me. 

The last is the hardest to understand.It brought back hazy associations with some Japanese cemeteries I've seen.       

Who Put The Art In Artica?

Finally, a post going up on time. It seems to take a quiet Saturday evening to get it done (except that Madeleine is on the floor next to me banging on her toy xylophone).

The Artica festival had music, performance art, some painting and a lot of sculpture. I get so fixed on cruising the area for images that I don't talk to the creators enough, missing out on titles and interpretation. The piece above is intriguing. Never seen a figure in a lotus position with up-stretched arms before. See what you like in the colors and symbols on the mannequin. The second photo is, literally, a bed of crutches. Someone said they were going to burn it after the main bonfire Sunday night. I wasn't out that late.      

Some Things Don't Change

Late post. I left my laptop at my office last night.

Our iconic statue, The Runner, is back. I think it came from the 1904 World's Fair. (To paraphrase Marlon Brando, we used to be somebody.) The circular pool is now much smaller, giving the sculpture more of a direct impact.  In the old installation, persons unknown used to dump red or blue dye into the water if something special was going on with the baseball or hockey teams. Now it has infinitely variable LED lighting.

And, of course, Fredbird, the Cardinals' idiotic mascot, often hangs around. Here, he is challenged by a fan of the San Fransisco Giants who were in town.

There is a good photo how the eastern half of the plaza used to look here.  Pretty bland and often unkempt. Also, there is an overview shot of the new plaza here. Hard to tell from the picture but that big lozenge of grass is hump-backed. The developers claim that if will provide seating for 2,000 people for concerts. I'm sceptical but we will see. Otherwise, it doesn't look very useful to me. Only a bit of shade around the edges and our summers are hot. 

Ocean Gate

Perhaps a piece of beach art. It invites us to use our imagination. Found on Playa Langosta.

            

 

Dark Horse

The font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, says that the origin of the term dark horse comes from the race track, a steed that is unknown to gamblers and thus difficult to place betting odds on. The first known use is in a novel published in 1831 by Benjamin Disraeli (!) used in just this context. These days it refers to a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, especially in a competition of some sort. 

This object is tucked in a corner of Citygarden. It's on a little artificial hill, mostly surrounded by trees and partly hidden. The work is called Zenit (zenith?) by the Italian artist Mimmo Paladino. If you look at it in more light (see first link) it resembles a horse more than anything, but not quite. And what's that sunbursty solid on its back? The zenith? Beats me. The poet Archibald MacLeish said a poem should not mean but be. So go figger it out for yourself.    

Outta Here

There are some well-known people in the arts from The Lou who checked out as soon as they could (although I went in the opposite direction). There are busts of two of them on the corners of Euclid and McPherson in the Central West End.

Above, Tennessee Williams. This one, I think, is more successful. Williams was born in Mississippi and got his nickname from the origins of his father's family. He arrived in STL at age 8 when dad got a job at International Shoe Company.  (There used to be a saying about St. Louis - first in shoes, first in booze and last In the American League. That was before the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.)

T. S. Eliot, below, looks rather frumpy by comparison. I suppose he was. He left STL at 16 and eventually became a British subject, renouncing his American citizenship. He was very High Anglican. And, I hear, he ended not with a bang but a whimper.

But, hey, Chuck Berry has stayed here his whole life.

Faces Of Statues In The Rain: Meeting Of The Waters 4

This chap on the top is either the fiercest or weirdest of the characters in Milles Fountain. I can't tell which. By the look of his hair you'd think he is Medusa's son.

Some of the figures are ambiguous. The boy (I presume) below could be scared, gasping for air or has escaped from Middle Earth.

Is this series getting tedious?             

Faces Of Statues In The Rain: Meeting Of The Waters 1

There is a large group of sculptures across Market Street from Union Station called The Meeting of the Waters. It symbolizes the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and has been on this blog a number of times (here, for example).

This it the main male figure, representing the Mississippi. He looks like he could use a Kleenex. Lots of the faces in this series will look like that.             

New Series: Faces Of Statues In The Rain

After nearly a decade of this endeavor new ideas are hard to find. And with just a few exceptions, I only get to shoot on weekends. I left home on Sunday morning in a light, steady rain and not a plan in my head. As I got downtown I noticed how the raindrops affected the many bronze statues in the area. And so this series, the faces of statues in the rain.

This first one is Aristede Maillol's La Riviere in Citygarden. The link has a much broader, brighter view. This selection makes me think of the bodies of dead migrants washed up on the shores of Greece or Italy.

Antique Tastes

One of Marysville's attractions is the Koester House, with its museum and somewhat strange gardens. German immigrant Charles (Karl?) Koester arrived in town in 1860 and soon made a name for himself. He ended up becoming the town banker, built a very fancy house by the standards of the day and filled the garden with reproductions of, I don't know, Greece-Roman-Renaissance-Baroque sculpture.  The garden isn't very big, the pieces seem thrown together in a crowded way, and yet it tells us something. What were the tastes of the well-to-do 150 years ago? The place seems very foreign in a prairie filled with corn fields.

Queen Of The Underworld

Technical difficulties. The friendly American Telephone and Telegraph Company - ATT - managed to disconnect all Internet, television and phone service to my home on Wednesday. We have to wait for a technician to come this evening. I've been trying to persuade Mrs. C to let me drop their cable TV service altogether since we watch it so little and the price is so outrageous. At the moment, I can only get Internet service using my mobile phone as a hot spot and it ain't real fast.

Persephone, as all you classicists know, was the queen of the underworld and wife of Hades in Greek mythology. But, because she was allowed to return to earth in the spring and went back down below in the fall, she was also the goddess of plant fertility and, along with her mother Demeter, of agriculture. I guess that's why her statue has this prime spot in our botanical garden. It is a beautiful art nouveau-ish work seen on these pages before.