Fayetteville’s Walton Arts Center has asked the state Highway Department about installing sculptures along Interstate 540 for the cultural enrichment of us all. Today’s Northwest Arkansas Times wrote it up, but its photos are not online. They’re palm trees, more or less, in bright colors. Wood, though made to look like metal. The subject comes up today because the paper has photos, finally.
We on occasion read about modern artists working deliberately to provoke. It’s brought to our attention when they apply for government grants. The thing about nearly all modern art, aside from these very few obnoxious ones, is their blandness.
They’re all squiggles or colors. In the manner of Jackson Pollock (no relation) or Franz Kline, whomever. On the grounds now of the Walton Arts Center are four-foot to six-foot metal sheets in gentle curves. Alexander Calder was there, first. These are 3-dimensional velvet sofa paintings.
The proposal for median of I-540 is fine. They’re inoffensive at the least. At best they’re silly or have an art-school clued-in, in-joke irony. “A museum without walls,” the artist says in the article. There’s no need for walls. No one will feel trapped by these pieces. No one will want to steal them, either.
Imagine if modern art hadn’t happened. A comparable proposal would have merited editorials and pickets for months: Mayor Coody on a horse. Marble or bronze? Two times or three-times life size? Ohmygawd. -30-
