🔷 Open Thread

[CDubs]

I wonder if it's just population. Isn't it possible to imagine this coming out of say, Amsterdam? Prague?

It's the same reason that fabulous architects propose fairly tame stuff for the Boston area. As a whole, we're conservative, and we'll find any number of reasons for the architect to not bother proposing his/her most interesting design, and instead be welcome with open arms in NYC. It's definitely less to do with the population size than the sort of individual the city draws from elsewhere. NYC has art, we have technology.

 

[czsz]

In Boston, everything is institutionalized. All the cultural assets are formal organizations, every bit of public art needs to be approved and installed by some local government committee. It's a combination of creative talent being monopolized by some institutions and snuffed out by others. This leaves very little room for spontaneity.

Everyone witnessed how absurd this was during the Shepherd Fairey spectacle (and to a lesser extent the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident, Martha Coakley's finest moment); Boston won't even let a timid, mediocre, bourgeois logo-artist put anything up here.

It's more like Geneva or the Hague here than Amsterdam or Prague (though the latter has probably grown stale in the last few years) - pretty, but stuffy.

 

[Beton Brut]

Sorry to come late to the conversation (busy weekend):

Loewy was more impresario than actual designer. He knew a good thing when one of his creative employees came up with it, so he'd ride their coattails and take the credit.

Andrew Geller was one of those people. I really dig his cottages on Fire Island, miniatures in an imaginative brand of Bruce Goff-inspired critical regionalism. These little houses presage both MLTW's Sea Ranch and Charles Gwathmey's vacation home for his parents.

 

[ablarc]

^ Like George Fred Keck?

 

[Beton Brut]

I've heard the Keck name before but never bothered to look him up.

This is exquisite.

Thanks for the tip, ablarc!

 

[ablarc]

It's the same reason that fabulous architects propose fairly tame stuff for the Boston area. As a whole, we're conservative, and we'll find any number of reasons for the architect to not bother proposing his/her most interesting design, and instead be welcome with open arms in NYC. It's definitely less to do with the population size than the sort of individual the city draws from elsewhere.

So what are we conserving? Surely not our tradition of being on architecture's cutting edge?

In Boston, everything is institutionalized. All the cultural assets are formal organizations, every bit of public art needs to be approved and installed by some local government committee. It's a combination of creative talent being monopolized by some institutions and snuffed out by others. This leaves very little room for spontaneity.

It's more like Geneva or the Hague here than Amsterdam or Prague...

Some heritage to preserve!

Clowns.

.

 

[briv]

^ One way New York is so much more creative.

You'd be unlikely to see this idea born in Boston.

Yeah, but does New York have an electrical box painting program like us?

Didnt think so.

 

[ablarc]

Yeah, but does New York have an electrical box painting program like us?

Link?

 

[briv]

http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?p=85555&#post85555

I was being sarcastic. Even this relatively modest, noninvasive program caused some controversy in the Back Bay, where the BBAC denied artists permission to paint the boxes within the boundaries of their fiefdom.

I think that a few pictures of the painted boxes have been posted elsewhere on the board.

 

[statler]

 

[czsz]

^ This is exactly what I'm talking about. An institutional, city-supported program. Art is okay, as long as you have all eight permits in order. Didn't it still cause controversy in Back Bay? Surprise.

In New York these things are tagged head to foot with guerilla art and advertising.

 

[ablarc]

In New York these things are tagged head to foot with guerilla art ...

Wouldn't be too hard to write an essay claiming all art is guerilla art, including Velazquez, Goya and Boston's own Puvis de Chavannes.

 

[czsz]

Howso? I think it would be hard to compare official portraits of the Spanish monarchy to ironic stickers illegally slapped on public power transformers.

Of course every artist blends a bit of official work or work-for-hire with his activities on the side, but V and G weren't taggers. They kept their independent activities to the side (note Boston doesn't have many of these people anymore, either, if it ever did).

 

[bostonbred]

IAM agreeink but some SAY What son? ANd the shark get squares RIGHT in middle of Back bay TO PROVING this POINT that betteroff gone but not ded here. Artisicly speeking that is.
Back bay peeples NOT understanding this ARTSY things!!! NOT likeING THE firefighter memorials TOO. BUT it OK if mens die saving BBpeeples but NOT ok for bronz thanku.

 

[ablarc]

Howso? I think it would be hard to compare official portraits of the Spanish monarchy to ironic stickers illegally slapped on public power transformers.

Aha! You've missed the delicious, mocking irony in those official portraits of the Spanish monarchy. Back to your history books, my man!

(Or just look again, and look closer.)

 

[czsz]

Oh, okay, that. Suffice to say I'm glad we live in a society where we don't have to resort to such subtle criticisms all the time.

(Still hard to find that sensibility among official artists in Boston, anyway. Maybe the deeper problem is too much reverence. A lack of irony.)

 

[ablarc]

... the deeper problem is too much reverence. A lack of irony.

Exactly.

 

[bostonbred]

That being SO truthness

 

[statler]

Well, Boston has bostonbred, so there's that.

 

[ablarc]

ANd the shark get squares RIGHT in middle of Back bay TO PROVING this POINT that betteroff gone but not ded here. Artisicly speeking that is.
Back bay peeples NOT understanding this ARTSY things!!!

Watson and the Shark by Copley.