Yesterday, PH alerted me to this: in July, courtesy of Danish (or Danish-Icelandic, or something) artist Olafur Eliasson (and, no doubt, with cash from the city), New York is getting its very own waterfalls, four of them, for example this one, under the Brooklyn Bridge a few blocks from where I live:
How cool is that???
I've lived in New York for twenty years, and at least during that period, seems to me, New York has lagged behind other cities (American and other) in the area of allowing, encouraging, and supporting public art: odd for a city that has, for a good part of the past century, been a major art center.
For example, I remember being in Boston (for God's sake -- I mean, nothing at all against Boston, but, I mean, you know?) in 1992 or so and thinking that there was some great public art on the "T" (i.e., the Boston subway), and thinking, "so where's our cool underground art? And for that matter, where's our public art at all?" There just wasn't much. There was some; there wasn't much.
Things have gotten better over the past twenty years -- and, I'm thinking (but would need to check some dates to be sure), particularly over the past ten.
We have the wonderful and nonsensical digital-countdown-clock-type-thing at the foot of Park Avenue South that counts down nothing (actually, it doesn't even count down per se; in fact, it doesn't count at all: it consists of twenty-or-so digits, and it's the digits towards the center that change most rapidly).
A few summers ago, we had Washington Square Park lit not by standard street lamps, but by over-sized, summer-colored lampshades lit from inside.
And last summer, in Madison Square Park, trees wrapped in sheets of aluminum (it sounds ugly; it was beautiful).
We have the Houston Street subway station under Varick Street in NoQuiSo (this not-quite-SoHo neighborhood sorely needs a name, which I hereby, as of the typing of this sentence, place in the public domain for all to use, free of charge) whose walls depict, in blue-green-yellow-mosaic form, what the station would look like if it were under water (porpoises swimming around, etc.). We have, at the 28th Street R-train station, another set of mosaics that I can't really describe but which used to make me happy in the morning when I was working a crappy freelance gig in 2003 on 28th and Fifth. At the Union Square station, we have more difficult-to-describe public art which, to fully absorb, you actually have to slow down or stop (to the annoyance of, for example, your girlfriend).
In 1999, we had the cows (several clever ones, but on the whole, not one of my favorites; it'd been done before, etc. -- but, at least, we learned that New York could host public art, at street level, which would not immediately be vandalized, a shock to me, at least).
And, of course, in 2005 we had Christo's orange-hanging-sheets thing ("The Gates") in Central Park (which I, personally, had a hard time getting excited about -- and what the fuck happened to Christo's last name? This single-name thing bothers me, I can admit, more than it probably should -- but who cares: public art should be accessible, yes, but doesn't need to appeal to everyone).
And now we'll have waterfalls. Can't wait. Love it.
Photo: nycwaterfalls.com.
