Butt-Fugly Public Art: Life Savers by Billie Lawless

38th and Spruce, Southwest Corner

               I haven't done one of these in awhile but when I happened upon this tarnished piece of elephant dung I couldn't resist telling you about it. What a piece of trash-- people wonder why art/design/architecture from the 1980s constantly gets derided. Well, this is your answer.
              It started in 1982. The Philadelphia Art Alliance had a sculpture show at Rittenhouse Square in order to celebrate the city's 300th birthday. The city was doing pretty shitty at the time but there were signs that things were about to get better-- plans were being put into motion to clean up/rebuild the City Hall clock tower, the One Logan Square/Four Seasons complex was breaking ground, the Hershey Philadelphia Hotel (now Doubletree) Broad and Locust was just finished, and a major motion picture was being filmed in the city. 
            Sculptor Billie Lawless prepared a submission for the show and I guess he didn't have to think very hard about it because he already designed a sculpture one year earlier called Cockle-Doodle-Doo (now standing at the Buffalo State College campus) that was EXTREMELY similar. He made this 1,200 pound pile of metal dogshit in the shape of 3 half circles, painted them goofy colors, and called it Life Savers because they kind of look like the candy of the same name. I don't know how they got a hold of it, but a year later, art patrons Phillip and Muriel Berman donated it and another sculpture to the University of Pennsylvania.
            UPenn put it up right next to the doorway of their veterinary hospital's emergency room, I guess so that when you bring your dying dog in, you can see the sculpture and say to yourself "Well, it sucks that my dog's dead, but at least I didn't make that shitty sculpture!"

Photo of it from when it was first installed. Source: University of Pennsylvania Almanac, February 22,1983.

             Maybe they put it next to the veterinary hospital because it's called Life Savers and lives are saved in there? Anyway, the sculpture sat in the same spot for the next 31 years until, in the latter half of 2014, it was mysteriously moved to the corner of 38th and Spruce along with the plaque from its dedication.
             Since the move, a large pockmark has appeared on the red part, which is even more mysterious. Its not there in the Google Streetview at the original location from May 2014:

Weird.

            Whatever. You'd think that if they were gonna move this thing to a location where waaaaay more people were going to see it, they would have restored the motherfucker first. Oh well-- just yet another UPenn public art atrocity. You'd think that all those fancy professors and students over there would try to make this kind of shit better, but it just keeps getting worse. Get on the ball, Penn. Get us some public art that people will actually want to look at once in awhile.

From this angle it looks just like the one at Buffalo State. Way to be creative, Billie.

        

Butt-Fugly Building: Congregation Mikveh Israel Synagogue V

44 North 4th Street

              ITS A FUCKING BRICK BOX!!!! What a disgrace. Congregation Mikveh Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in Philly and second oldest in the United States, deserves a much nicer place than this pile of shitbricks. Independence Mall, the collection of grass lots created to honor Independence Hall and the historic district, deserves a much better-looking building fronting it from this side, even though this thing is across the street from the entrance of its underground parking garage. Everything about this just sucks.
           This is Kalal Kadosh Mikveh Israel's 5th building. The first two were at 3rd and Cherry. The third was a nice William Strickland design located at what is now the site of the unfortunate-looking African American Museum in Philadelphia (I can forgive its butt-fugliness considering it was forced to be hastily constructed in 4 months due to Society Hill NIMBYs who fought its original placement at 6th and Pine, but that's a whole other story). The fourth was a badass structure still standing at the southeast corner of Broad and York designed by the NYC firm of Pilcher and Tachau.
         This, the fifth Mikveh Israel Synagogue, was proposed as early as 1953, when North Philly was well into the process of turning to shit. Though once boasting a large Jewish population with numerous venerated congregations, by this point that had all turned to crap. Mikveh Israel was one of the only ones that didn't follow the Philadelphia Jewish families out to burbs. Around the same time, large areas of land near Independence Hall, filled with unbelievably beautiful treasures of architecture from the Gilded Age, were getting the shit demolished out of them to make way for Independence Mall. Areas surrounding it were parsed out into different renewal areas and were later made available through the Redevelopment Authority.
        Mikveh Israel decided that a move to this new renewal area would not only place them back to their original neighborhood, but also cement their presence with all the visitors that would one day arrive there. They hired Louis Magaziner, who designed them a new place before they even knew where exactly it was going to be located. After spending the rest of the 50s fighting over whether to move to Independence Mall or to the burbs, Mikveh Israel finally went ahead and purchased a plot of land on the future Mall, specifically Independence Mall Renewal Area Unit 3 Parcel 14, otherwise known as the former 401 block of Commerce Street.
       By this point, the Vice President of the Congregation was friends with Louis Kahn, so they hired him to design the new place. As much as I might talk shit about ol' Louis sometimes, I do somewhat admire is religious structures. Before I even knew a damn thing about architecture or shit like that, I enjoyed the Unitarian Church he designed in Rochester, New York for the way it uses indirect light to create a certain kind of ambiance inside. Coincidentally enough, Kahn started working on Mikveh Israel right after that church.
       Kahn took this project very seriously and continuously worked on it from 1961 to 1970. His main theme seemed to be centered around playing with light (just like the Rochester place) using cylinders all over the facade. Kahn supposedly went through re-design after re-design and even went through the trouble of making models of not only the whole complex but of individual pieces of it. By the time 1970 rolled around, there was urgency to get this thing done before the Bicentennial and Kahn's $5 million design wasn't going to happen. Mikveh Israel fired him after 9 years and 10 re-designs. Those designs are still heralded as some of his best shit. Some of the models are still on display at MoMA and others travel around the world to be put on display. The ordeal ended up inspiring a whole book that was published in 2009.

A 1964 design from the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

             The Congregation then hired the successor firm of Paul Phillipe Cret, Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson (now H2L2), for what would by far be their worst design-- which is saying something considering that they're the ones who "modernized" the facade of the Real Estate Trust Company Building.
             From 1972-1975, Mikveh Israel tried to raise enough money to get the new place built, but still came up short with the Bicentennial approaching pretty fucking soon. Then came a great idea: incorporate a museum of American Jewish History to join the brazillion other museums that were proposed for the Bicentennial-era Mall and get that to be the headliner for the new building. It worked. Not only was the congregation able to get a grant from the Bicentennial Committee, a whole new shitload of donors would arrive to help the place get built in time. With the rest of the money borrowed, the congregation went ahead with construction at the end of 1975 on a design even more simplified than originally planned.
            Construction was forced to be pretty fast but didn't even make it on time. On July 4th, 1976, the partially-constructed congregation opened, but didn't have the official opening ceremony until that September.
          So what did we get? A motherfucking brick box facing Independence Mall.

Yay?

          ... and another shit brick facade facing 4th Street.

This one at least has a little bit of design happening, though trees cover it up most of the year.

          Ever since the museum moved over to its own new building in 2010 (another only slightly-more-interesting box btw), anyone who isn't a member of the congregation even knows this shit is there. Very few tourists ever even venture down former Commerce Street unless they are on some kind of guided tour or are wondering what those Georgia Guidestones-looking things in front of the entrance are. That's crap.

        Speaking of which-- what the fuck is that shit? Let me take an aside here to talk about this shitty piece of public art.

Butt-Fugly Public Art: Netanyahu Memorial by Buky Schwartz

                This pile of rocks right here was created in 1986 to honor Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan "Yoni" Netanyahu, a legendary Israeli Army soldier who attended Cheltenham High School and was killed in action at age 30 during Operation Entebbe on the same day as the Bicentennial. You may recognize his last name from his little brother Benjamin, the current Prime Minister of Israel.
              From what I understand, this guy was pretty badass, and therefore it is understood why there should be a memorial to him at Mikveh Israel. Somehow, this has been interpreted as a rectangular piece of granite that had the middle chipped out of it and then placed back into a rectangle. The artist was Buky Schwartz, a guy who specialized in many sculptures with box, square, box, rectangular, and box-related squarish-rectangular qualities.
            What happened to statues? Memorialize the fucking guy with a statue! Remember the old days, when bad-ass military heroes got kick-ass statues of themselves on big-ass horses and shit!?!? How the hell did cool stuff like that get reduced down to a bunch of fucking granite slabs?! You don't even have to go that far back into history to find a cool military statue...here's one from Nicaragua memorializing an unknown soldier:

Now that's how you fucking do it

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- August 30th

Wilt Chamberlain by Omni Amrany

Southeast Corner of the Wells Fargo Center

Pic from philart.net

                      Ok, I get what they were trying to do here but this just looks ridiculous. A statue is a statue, for fuck's sake. Its supposed to be still. If they wanted it to be in motion so badly, they should have made it like those animatronic historical figures.
                      Omni Armany, the dude that designed this sculpture, has also created similar pieces honoring other sports figures. Some others have the same "being splashed by a bucket of diarrhea" look to them. The one thing I like about this is how there are two figures of the same person. I guess that's kinda cool... the casual crouching Wilt Chamberlain shape-shifts Odo-style into 76ers Wilt kicking some ass.
                     I also don't mind how parts of the sculpture seems like freeze frames of moving body parts-- I just can't get away from the diarrhea of bronze in between. Also, why stop at just two figures? They should have had casual Wilt turn into Conan the Destroyer Wilt and THEN become 76ers Wilt.

"His Numberwang is the size of my leg" -Princess Jehnna

                    This 17-foot Chamberlain-Diarrhea Attack Montage weighs 3,000 lbs and was cast by A.R.T. Enterprises out of Centerville, PA. It cost $300,000, paid for by the Wilt Chamberlain Foundation. The casual Wilt is supposed to depict Wilt in his Overbrook High days. A staff of 30 assembled the Bronze Feces Explosion over a year and a half. It was installed outside the Wells Fargo Center back when it was called the Wachovia Center in 2004.
                  The statue is not the only Wilt-related artwork you can find in the city. A mural depicting Chamberlain stands on the side of 1243 Vine Street. Its right next to a mini-surface parking lot. If and when that lot gets developed, it'll probably be gone. I don't go nuts about losing murals like others do.. they are meant as placeholders and can always be re-painted somewhere else.
                  I think a proper monument to Wilt Chamberlain would be great for Philadelphia. It doesn't necessarily have to be at the Sports Complex-- it could go in Fairmount Park. In 1990, a video simulation of that that would be like was made:



Seems pretty good to me... build it.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- August 16th

Unnamed 9/11 Memorial

Schuylkill Banks just south of Chestnut Street Bridge

              Well, we all knew something like this was coming. For the last 10 years, pieces of the World Trade Center have been sold by the NY/NJ Port Authority for use as memorials in cities, towns, and villages across America. Supposedly, over 400 memorials have been created from the structural steel of the WTC. This doesn't really make any single piece of WTC steel special-- yet here we are, a brand new not-yet-dedicated 9/11 memorial using structural steel in Philadelphia in 2012.
             Worse yet, its in the Schuylkill River Park/Trail, one of the city's best amenities. The first time I saw this thing, I didn't know it was a 9/11 memorial.. I had seen it from the Chestnut Street Bridge and that little flag wasn't there. From that vantage-point, it just looks the pedestal for some unfinished piece of public art.

From the Chestnut Street Bridge.

               Only when you get close to it do you know what the fuck its for. Its a sad piece... a short girder of steel sinking into a granite slab with the names of some locals who died in the incident. That's pretty much it.
              Look, I'm not saying that a 9/11 Memorial should be this big bombastic ostentatious thing with penises everywhere, but anything's gotta be better than this.. especially since there's so many similar memorials elsewhere. On their website, the Schuylkill River Development Corp says that they had acquired the steel and had the memorial designed by the Wells Appel firm.

Pics from the Schuylkill Banks website showing construction of the memorial.

                   But that's not all... there's ANOTHER 9/11 Memorial in the works for Philly, and yet AGAIN it will be using structural steel from the WTC. This one will take up the southeast corner of Franklin Square and will be a great clash of two cliches-- steel from the WTC and yet another depiction of the Liberty Bell.

Rendering from the Philly 9/11 website.

                    In this one, the pedestal will be a giant Pennsylvania keystone shape with steel from the WTC, limestone from the Pentagon, and soil/stone from the PA crash site. The towers will be depicted in stone. In the middle will be a half-size replica of the Liberty Bell. The crack of the bell will be filled with WTC Steel. A non-profit called Philly 9/11 is in the midst of collecting donations for the memorial, calling the concept "Mending Liberty". I don't know how long they've been trying to get this built, but their website looks like it was made on 9/12.
                 As corny as the Philly 9/11 version of a memorial seems, its leaps and bounds more interesting than that single short piece of steel on a granite pedestal at the Schuylkill Banks. The Philly 9/11 website also says that the piece's design is subject to change-- so hopefully it changes alot. The victims of 9/11 deserve a proper memorial in Philadelphia, lets hope we get a better one some time soon. 

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- August 2nd

Steel Woman II by Thomas Schutte

Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden (PMA parking garage)

Oy. Image from philart.net

                         Fuck this sculpture and fuck pretentious-ass "series" of the same sculpture over and over again in slightly different ways. This piece of shit is just another in a series of garbage by German artist Thomas Schutte (Pronounced shoot-a).
                       The sculpture (and series) depicts a nude woman bending in on herself in some kind of fucked up yoga pose on top of a steel coffee table. The left arm of the figure is all fucked up, looking more like an error in the casting process than a design. The hair looks like a mat of macaroni and cheese that got out of control. Don't worry, this malformed piece of horsetrash is considered a great work of art by a super-human artist.
                    Series like this happen when a perfectly good artist gets way too full of shit and gets called "one of the world's most important contemporary artists" by snooty art publications. They get to a point where anything they make will get its ass kissed, so they make series of the same shit over and over again. Schutte, who used to make some pretty cool shit, started making these coffee table nudes in 1998 and hasn't fucking stopped since.  Sometimes he switches up the materials used--- this one was while he was using steel.
                   

Photo from a Schutte show in Italy this last June. Is that enough coffee tables for ya?

                To be fair, Schutte has done some non-coffee table works since '98 that are pretty cool, but he eventually goes right back to the stupid nudes on the tables in between and that's what mostly gets displayed. What bunk. Schutte has been quoted as saying "Design is an element in Social Responsibility." How is depicting naked chicks on coffee tables with missing limbs and shit "social responsibility"? Schutte, you need to shoot-a the fuck up. The more you have to explain it, the more it sucks.
             Steel Woman II was made in 1999 and was displayed along with other coffee tables for 10 years before being installed in the Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden in 2009. I bet that if she was named Anne Murphy, they wouldn't be naming shit after her, no matter how awesome she once ran the place. d'Harnoncourt is the ultimate name for something at the PMA-- it has it all... lowercase first letter, apostrophe, lots of syllables, and from Austrian nobility (the d' names from non-German Austrian nobility were made up to sound more regal, so the name has been bullshit since the beginning).
              Its just a matter of time before every city and college campus will have one of Schutte's shitty coffee table nudes.... however, the Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden's stuff is supposed to rotate out every few years, so hopefully Philly won't have one by then. Thank Zod.

"You're welcome."

               For the PMA's high-falutin-ass description of the sculpture, click here.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- July 19th

Object for Expression by Warren Holzman

Hawthorne Park

                     The Hawthorne neighborhood has sure come a long way in the last 15 years. Once home to the worst public housing project ever built, the neighborhood has finally seen new life after a long dormant period. Part of that renaissance was the construction of the kick-ass awesome Hawthorne Park and an actual non-Mural Arts non-Zagar-related public art piece, Object for Expression. Unfortunately, its a boring piece of horsetrash.
                    First a quick modern history of Hawthorne: In 1960, the neighborhood, full of little interstitial streets and remains of ancient diagonal highways, was torn down in favor of ugly-ass public housing tower...they called the project Hawthorne Square but renamed it Martin Luther King, Jr. Plaza in 1970. The project, like others like it, became a crime-infested zoo of scallywags and ne'er-do-wells. Less than four decades after being built, areas to the north were semi-gentrified but Hawthorne was still a piece of shit. By this point, MLK Plaza was falling apart and only half of the 500 units could be considered even slightly livable.

                 In the mid-90's, city officials and other public figures started discussing the total destruction of the project and a revitalization of the neighborhood. Despite protests by people who thought it was a good idea to have a bunch of shitty 1960 ass-towers spread crime for another 40 years, the towers were rightly blown the fuck up on October 17th, 1999. New mixed-income semi-affordable housing started going up almost immediately, though the neighborhood consisted of a sea of empty lots well into the early 2000's. The new stuff was a result of HOPE VI legislation and was developed by a partnership with Kenny Gamble's crooked-ass Universal Companies and some other developer (if Kenny cared that much about the neighborhood, he would do something with the empty lot at 13th and Bainbridge that he's been sitting on for 7 years).
                  Strangely enough, it took 70 years to figure out that affordable housing could look like regular rowhouses, and that's exactly what they built. Walking down 13th street in Hawthorne gives you an idea of what 1890's rowhouses looked like when they were new. Once the new MLK homes were nearly complete, people still found ways to complain about it. There were four main qualms: 1) The new MLK Plaza doesn't have as many units as the crappy towers had, 2) White-owned businesses did the construction (the horror!!!!!!!), 3) The new stuff took too long to build, and 4) the old PHA-owned Hawthorne Community Center and lot at 12th and Catharine, both originally planned to be revitalized, still stood vacant.
               In 2010, the PHA gave up on both spaces. The ugly-ass Community Center, considered historic because Martin Luther King made a speech to 2300 people from its steps in 1965, was knocked down and replaced with market-rate housing. The lot at 12th and Catharine was given over to the city for the purposes of building a $2.15 Million park. This new and kick-ass place called Hawthorne Park would have to satisfy its own Percent-for-Shit requirement, and a competition was held for what it should be. The winner was a crappy piece of junk by artist/blacksmith Warren Holzman called Object for Expression. Ugh, the pretentious-ass naming conventions of public art continues. 

It was included in the renderings of the park, though in a slightly different location. That ghost-person with a backpack is about to fall over.

                    The stainless steel ass-mesh is supposed to be a lectern that's supposed to "encourage impromptu performances and oration" and also honor that time Martin Luther King spoke nearby. Continuing in the tradition of horrible public art dedicated to King, the "lectern" looks more like the Hiller Hovering Platform. The new plaque dedicating King's speech is better looking than this piece of shit. There was a great opportunity for a great piece of public art here, but we're all gonna have to settle for this. What a shame. A 20-foot statue of MLK doing the Vulcan salute with both hands would have been more appropriate.
                     Hawthorne's rebirth has been an extraordinarily awesome step in the right direction for the city, even though people are still finding reasons to whine about it. I wish the neighborhood all the best...sorry the public art there has to be some of the worst.

Is it crooked? I've always loved that mural with the dude screaming in the baby's face.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- July 5th

Class of '62 Walkway Markers

37th and Walnut, 37th and Spruce

Pictured: crap.

                    When I first saw this, I thought it was yet another crappy Penn public art piece from the 60's, but no... its from this year, 2012! This is one of the newest pieces of public art in the city and its t-rash. Yet another shitty "modern" obelisk like so many others in our fair city.
                    These new penis-rocks are the latest gift from the 427 living members of Penn's class of 1962. 25 years ago, they were the ones that spawned the famous Ben Franklin on the Bench sculpture that everyone associates with Penn. Well, for their 50th anniversary, they added one more Ben Franklin-related thing for the Class of '62 Walk, aka 37th Street through the Penn Campus.
                   The two sculptures, one at 37th and Walnut, one at 37th and Spruce, are placed in order to mark the two termini of the Class of '62 Walk in the same way that old-timey obelisk-shaped location markers did in Franklin's time. Supposedly, those markers were integral to Franklin's Post Office, even though the vast majority of them in this country were installed well after Franklin's death.
                  The marker near Walnut Street points to Albany and Paris, the Spruce Street one points to Boston and London... all locations that were significant to Ben Franklin. As if we need more shit dedicated to Ben Franks in this city. Its enough already. 
                   What is it with these Penn classes that still want to make a name for themselves like they're still in college? Class of '23 Ice Arena, Class of '47 Meeting Room, Class of '49 Auditorium, Class of '68 Seminar Room, Class of '79 Africana Studies Resource Room... the list goes on. Maybe I went to a crappy college or something, but I couldn't name a single member of my Class of '02, let alone see myself donating in order to build some kind of bullshit on the campus. Class of '02 Asshole Center maybe? 
                    Anyway, back to these shitty "obelisks". I put obelisk in quotes because as you can see from the crappy picture above, these motherfuckers could barely classify as such, because they're yet another modern take on obelisks. If they wanted to commemorate the old obelisk-shaped location markers, why didn't they just recreate some and install them here? That would be way more appropriate. 
                   Did I mention that these shitbelisks cost $500,000?!??!? 500 goddamn stacks... how much disposable income does these 427 alumni have? Maybe if they spent a few more bucks, Penn would actually acknowledge the markers' presence... their public art map doesn't care about them (check "Public Art" at the top).
                 The markers were dedicated as part of the Class of '62 50th Reunion on May 12, 2012, as if it wasn't enough to have an entire pedestrian street named after them. Expect these stone phalluses to be standing for the next 200 years. It pisses me off that these brand new obelisks will probably get way more respect than the 175-year-old Newkirk Viaduct Monument that sits under a bridge alongside shitty rail tracks, covered in graffiti. 

A better obelisk. It only cost $1100 to build... $21,400 today.

                         What garbage. The Class of '62 raises money for other more noble shit than crappy public art, but these two markers were a big waste of half a million bones. I guess we'll just have to wait for their 75th reunion to see what other bullshit with their name on it they have installed. Fuck.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- June 7th

Stroll by William King

The 0000 block of South Street.

Pitiful. Image from philart.net.

                            Look at this scary-ass shit. These three giant rectangular stick figures freak me the fuck out. They're like the aliens on South Park. Why are the all holding hands like that? Horrible. Just Horrible!!
                           These 30 foot shitcannons, installed in 1995, are the result of shit that started way back in 1971. When the extremely stupid and shortsighted plan for I-95's waterfront-destroying historic property killing path of destruction through our fair city was first revealed, heroic NIMBYs went fucking nuts over it, and rightly so. To resolve a lawsuit bent on ending the entire project (failed), a consent degree was entered with PennDOT. Supposedly, one of the items on the decree was the construction of a pedestrian bridge over the interstate monkeyshit runway where it destroyed the 0000 block of South Street.
                         It wasn't until 1995 that the stupid bridge, that's really just a bridge to a parking lot, was built. To satisfy its Percent-for-Art crap, William King was commissioned to come up with a cool sculpture that would show off the pedestrianness of the crappy bridge/park to nowhere. In response, he created these three big motherfucking Zeta Reticulans, who must have visited him the night before. He called it Stroll. King should get strolled for this shit.
                        To accommodate this humongous steel dildo mesh, the $3.25 million South Street Pedestrian Bridge had to be redesigned to support the size and weight of it. Hope it was worth it, you bastards. The sculpture was dedicated on May 31st, 1995.

When it was shiny and new... nice yellow and pink shirt lol

                         Ever since, this stupid-ass sculpture has been sitting there, barely noticed, ever since. No one uses that stupid pedestrian bridge, which would be a hell of a lot nicer if it didn't lead straight to a surface parking lot at the bottom of a bunch of stairs and a long-ass ramp. Rumor has it that the humongous master plan for the waterfront includes an extension of the bridge that would lead to the waterfront. If that ever happens (a BIG if), more people will be subjected to this crappy, crappy piece of public art.
                     Ya know, if it were 30 foot statues of people that looked like people instead of greys, the sculpture would make a helluva lot more sense. Oh well... we're gonna be stuck with these things for a long-ass time, so you might as well get used to 'em. Shitzod!!

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- May 24th

Bolt of Lightning  by Isamu Noguchi

200 North 6th Street

Trash. Image by philart.net.

                                I'm definitely not the first one to talk shit about this big metal pile of fuck. It looks like a beacon used to contact anal probing aliens. Bolt of Lightning doesn't just look like butt, its in a butt location as well. You take your life into your hands trying to get near this thing.
                              Legend has it that the artist, Isamu Noguchi, first conceived of this assfruit in 1933. The Fairmount Part Art Association held its first Sculpture International exhibition in that year, part of which was a competition for a new sculpture for Fairmount Park along West River Drive.  Noguchi contributed a bunch of sculptures and drawings to the cause. Supposedly, one of the drawings was of a monument to Ben Franklin depicting that whole "kite and key" thing. Noguchi claimed he was inspired by radio towers.
                            In 1979, the Philadelphia Museum of Art had a retrospective exhibiting all of Noguchi's shit from over the years. Among the items exhibited was the old sketch of the giant streel whale dildo. Trustees from the Fairmount Park Art Association peeped the drawing and talked about getting it built in honor of the city's upcoming tricentennial in 1982. Noguchi was commissioned to develop the sketch into a buildable mega-kite of imperial cockmeat.

Model of the final design from noguchi.org.

                        Because it would be a such a top-heavy design, Noguchi had to consult with NYC engineering firm Weidlinger Associates to figure out how the fuck this 58 ton monster would stay standing. Guy wires were added to hold the motherfucker up. Of course, Noguchi had to make up some bullshit about the wires being "the eternal and essential contact between air and earth". What nonsense.
                       Despite originally being conceived to stand in Fairmount Park, the FPAA gave Noguchi the choice of location. Noguchi then made the worst fucking decision of his life. He wanted the 106-foot sculpture to stand in Memorial Park, the nearly unreachable plaza at the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge. That big triangular "park" was originally designed to be an underground trolley transfer hub... it was never completed. This caused a shitty sculpture to be standing in a shitty spot. Only zooming motorists would ever get close enough to look at it. Just try to cross over to Memorial Park during rush hour. You will die.
                   The final design is ridiculous. Why is the lightning bolt UNDER the kite? Why does it look like the key is holding the kite? Why did anyone ever think this was good? Bah. Legend has it that the design was considered so ugly that DRPA only approved it because it might distract away from an upcoming bridge toll hike. With some city money and a big-ass grant from the estate of George Dunton Widener (Bringer of the Ritz Carlton who went down with the Titanic), the $865,000 skyturd was built and dedicated on September 16th, 1984, 2 years overdue.
                       Once completed, Bolt of Lightning got its ass kissed by some and rightly shit upon by others. "...Fails in its intended purpose by every major criterion" is probably the best official dig the press took at the sculpture. That quote pretty much sums it up like how Carl Sagan on Cosmos would sum up a huge astrological concept into one sentence that explains the entire thing.

"Billions of billions of Fuck" -Carl Sagan standing in front of Boston's brutalist City Hall.

                        I agree that there should be a large sculpture depicting the kite and key story, but this is definitely not it. Instead of that stupid lightning kite, there should be a 100-foot statue/fountain of Ben Franklin that would piss water onto the incoming cars from the bridge. Give those suburbanites a good ol' Philly welcome they will never forget. I don't know what that has to do with the kite and key, but fuck it.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- May 10th

Christoper Columbus Monument by Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates

Columbus Boulevard at Dock Street

Is that supposed to be what Columbus's dick looked like? Pic from ZoomAndGo.com

                      This thing looks ridiculous, and gets worse and worse as you get closer to it. The Columbus Memorial is probably the ugliest obelisk in the history of civilization. One of the biggest pieces of public art in the city, this steel Columbus Cock gives all Philadelphia public art a bad name.
                     Since 1975, the official quincentennial anniversary celebration of Chistopher Columbus's landing in the New World was being planned for Philadelphia. Endless groups and committees and corporations were created to plan the massive two-day international parade and party. In 1989, one of the groups, the American 500 Corporation, commissioned what would become the piece de resistance of the event, a massive quincentennial memorial that was touted as "changing the skyline".
                   When people heard "changing the skyline" they went nuts over it. To actually effect the Philadelphia skyline, it would have to be HUGE!! Then they got Robert Venturi's firm, the demons behind the butt-fugly Guild House and other assorted atrocities, to come up with the design. Big mistake! Venturi's people created a steel tower of panels that hang from a central pole. At the top would be a weathervane shaped like Italy and Spain's flags and the bottom would be walls of useless text.

The maquette of an early version of the design.

                  The super-geniouses at Venturi thought that the memorial should be an obelisk, since Columbus was Italian and many obelisks can be found in Rome. That's just dumb. The only reason Rome has obelisks is because Ancient Roman emperors thought the ones in Egypt were cool, so they would either capture them or build copies. In later centuries, popes thought they were cool so some more were built and so on and so on... but really, obelisks are for Egyptians. Using an obelisk in this way to memorialize Columbus would be like using a statue of Alyssa Milano to memorialize the Tokugawa Shogunate.

At about the same time the Columbus Memorial was being created, Allysa Milano was very popular in Japan.

                       In June 1992, three years and $1.05 million dollars later, the piece of junk was built. Once it was done, the people who were orignally so excited about it threw up in their own mouths. The tower was a massive disappointment and definitely did not change the skyline at only 106 feet tall. A few months later, the gigantic quincentennial event, named "Land Ho! Philadelphia Columbus Day Weekend" (lol), went off without a hitch. The grande finale of the weekend would be the official unveiling of this ugly steel fuckstick accompanied by a gigantic fireworks display.

From the celebration.

                   In 1993, the Pennsylvania Society of Architects gave it the Design Award for Excellence in Architectural Design. Venturi's ass must be covered in scars from how much its been kissed. Twenty years later, no one cares. The stupid monument just sits there collecting pigeonshit, barely noticed despite its "skyline changing" size. Some people make the mistake of attempting to read the wall of text found on all sides of it, which is stupid.

They crossed his name out! Pic from philart.net.

                        Among the labels Mathematician and Cartographer are crazy ones on the other sides like Naturalist and Charismatic Leader. There's some kiss-ass info about Columbus and the names of every last human being that had something to do with the creation of the monument. Among them, it says "the Honorable Vincent J. Fumo". Honorable? That alone is a reason this thing sucks.
                      We were supposed to get a Columbus's discovery-related memorial that would change the skyline, but instead we got a big metal pud. If it was dicks they wanted, they should have asked for a 500-foot statue of Columbus with 500 cocks that would snake all around the neighborhood with speakers at the tips that would forever play David Hasselhoff music. That would be more appropriate than this mess. Fuck.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- April 26th

Video Arbor by Nam June Paik

Franklin Town Boulevard

How it looks most of the time-- like shit. Pic from philart.net.

                      Ah jeez... Video Art. Video Installations. Video Assholeryness. These things are so fucking horrible. Sometimes art has a way of getting into realms it should never cross. Television SHOWS are more artistic than television art. Here we have a situation where the video art is so bad, its an insult to video art itself, which already sucks! Its like if your ass cancer had cancer on its ass!
                     Stupid fucking Franklintown. The worse revitalization plan in the history of concrete. Franklintown Boulevard is like no other diagonal street in town. It wasn't like the others you see in Center City that used to be highways to other towns that got taken over by the street grid. Franklintown Boulevard was artificially placed into the street grid by the dumbshits who thought Franklintown was the Philly of the future. It was originally supposed to have moving sidewalks. Seriously.

Bahahahahaahaha.

                    In 1987, 16 years after Franklintown was first proposed, the butt-fugly One Franklin Town was built. To satisfy its percent-for-art requirement, they called in a famous artist known as the Andy Warhol of Korea, Nam Jun Paik. Paik is known as the father of video art... that's like saying you're the father of asscheese.
                  Paik saw this as an opportunity to do something new. He had never designed a permanently outdoor video art display, so for this piece, he would mount 84 video monitors way up in the air on a big-ass arbor that would eventually become overgrown with shrubbery (landscape design was by John Bentley). Paik researched ways of having outdoor television sets stay functional for years and would use a technologically-advanced recording for the video sequences-- laserdisc. The tv sets would be displayed in three rows, showing two different videos at once. One is a mish-mash of corny Philadelphia images interspersed with crap, the other is geometric-looking shit changing shapes. This stupendous pile of donkey turds was dedicated in October of 1990.  It was named Video Arbor, since it is an arbor of videos. Finally... a name for an art piece that isn't pretentious as fuck.
                  The biggest problem with this piece is that it only can truly be appreciated at night. During the day, it just looks like a bunch of shitty broken tv screens with plants all over the place. Paik seems to have attempted to solve this problem by placing small reliefs of circuitboards around along with sundail and clock imagery as a distraction, but it doesn't work. 
                   As anyone could have guessed, the televisions didn't stay functional. If you put 84 TV's outside, even with the best protection, you're always going to have a few that won't work forever. Its just a matter of statistical probability. Now, 22 years later, even if the TV's were indoors there would be some fucked up ones. Its not clear when they stopped playing the video due to too many fucked up screens, but I remember seeing the them functioning in 2004.
                   Amber Dorko Stopper, a big fan of Paik's work, first noticed that the screens weren't being activated in 2006. She worked for years to get the videos back up and running. Finally, this last January, Paik's Folly aka Video Arbor was reactivated. Here's her video of it. You can see that more than half the screens don't work. Useless. 
                   Why did anyone think this piece of shit was a good idea? Video for a PERMANENT outdoor art piece? I don't think they understood what permanent meant. In 1,000 years, most of the old bronze statues and shit from the early days of Philadelphia public art will still be standing, looking the same if not better with age. That's permanence. In 1,000 years, Video Arbor, if still standing, will have wisteria covering its broken screens because no one will ever know that they used to play video. That's not permanent. That's crap.

Here's a pic from philart.net showing more of the screens working.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- April 12th

Bicentennial Bell Tower by Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc.

113 South Third Street

It was the 70's... what did you expect?

                       This is a bell tower? Quite pathetic. This has to be Independence National Historical Park's greatest living blunder, and that's saying something. This piece of shit has uselessly stood here for 46 years years, making millions of tourists over that period of time look up and say, "Huh?". It is the spawn of a bad idea that stemmed from more bad ideas. Fuck you, Bicentennial Bell Tower.
                       People love that goddamn Liberty Bell. For years, Philadelphians have especially gone bananas over this thing. Before it was an oversaturated image that everyone was sick of, the bell was a sacred shrine that existed within another sacred shrine, Independence Hall. Every time the bell was removed from the Hall, people protested... even when it would be paraded around town and returned the same day. In the mid 20th Century, the shit got real.
                       The new Independence National Historical Park, destroyer of some of  Philadelphia's greatest architectural treasures, was going to bring a lot more visitors to the bell, located in a little hallway at the bottom of a stairway in Independence Hall. It would need to be moved. The first idea was to move it to its own building at 3rd and Chestnut in 1958. People went fucking nuts and the National Park Service delayed the project.
                       By the early 1970's, preparations for the Bicentennial celebration began. At this point, Philadelphia was trying to put on a Bicentennial Exhibition and World's Fair, assuming that the entire world would be descending on the city. The Liberty Bell would have to be moved to keep Independence Hall from being overrun. The planners went back to 3rd and Chestnut, where a new Visitor's Center would be built... this could be the new location for the Liberty Bell. In 1972, the NHP commissioned the Cambridge Seven firm to design the new center with a bell tower that would house the world's most famous bell.
                       It was the 70's, so the cutting edge design Cambridge Seven came up with was asinine. An 106-foot rectangular brick tower, suspending the bell from cables all the way down to street level. Special windows would reflect sunlight inside the tower and onto the bell.

The rendering of the Visitor's Center with a slightly different Bell Tower. 

This is how the bell would be displayed.

                        Philadelphians went FUCKING APESHIT when they saw the design. They complained that it looked like a prison turret. They complained about the Visitor Center's crappy 1970s-style design. They complained about the bell being too far away from Independence Hall. Frank Rizzo, mayor at the time, endorsed the bell's move but got crushed by the public outrage over the horrible look of the tower.
                         Eventually, the park folks caved and moved the bell onto Independence Mall, right across the street from Independence Hall. The ugly Mitchell Giurgola Liberty Bell Center was a huge improvement over Cambridge Seven's shitty tower. Despite the bell not moving to the Visitor's Center, the tower was built anyway! It would house a replica Liberty Bell (the Bicentennial Bell) that was gifted by the Queen of England in 1976.

The ceremony on July 6, 1976.

                        The tower was different from the original design.. the windows were gone and the bottom section was opened up. Smaller rectangular openings were placed at the top-- seemingly to accommodate the Bicentennial Bell. The replica bell was to be rung at the time of presidential inaugurations and coronation of British monarchs, but ended up just being rung every day at 11am and 3pm. After the bell broke in 2005, it was never fixed, letting the world know how forgettably useless that stupid bell tower is.
                        This dark cloud has a silver lining, however. Bicentennial Bell Tower's days are numbered. The new American Revolution Center is to be built in place of the failed Visitor's Center/Living History Center. The butt-fugly, stained-up, outdated tower is to be demolished. Of course, there is some NIMBY opposition. The destruction of the building and tower will signal the total erasure of the super-ugly bicentennial-era additions to the Independence National Historical Park/Grass Lot Collection. Boo fucking hoo.
                        I, for one, will be glad to see this motherfucker go down. Hopefully, I can be there when it happens. Its not every day that a piece of butt-fugly public art gets destroyed. Hooray!       

It only looks good from this angle. Up its ass.

Butt-Fugly Public Art of the Week-- March 29th

Open Air Aquarium by Magdalena Abakanowicz

Pier 30 (Kenilworth Street Pier, 717 South Columbus Boulevard)

Oh, that's where I put my silver turds! Image from philart.net

                          This is yet another case where Philadelphia's only piece by an otherwise very strong artist has to be a pathetic piece of rhinoceros shit. Or in this case, pieces. This is also yet another case where the Percent-for-Fart program forced a developers hand, resulting in a crappy and shoehorned-in piece of shit. I've already made it clear on this blog that the Residences at Dockside building is a Crudulous pile of Donkey Testicles. As bad as the building is, I still don't think it looks worse than the crappy art that was forced to be installed in front of it.
                          Open Air Aquarium consists of 30 stainless steel fish-like shapes on poles 12 feet off the ground in two plazas. Each fish weighs between 125 and 150 pounds and are between 6 and 8 feet long. The forms are abstract and have fucked up edges. They look like if God's silver shit fell from the sky and stopped in mid-air. It would look nicer if the sculptures actually looked like fish. It would be cornier, but not nearly as horrendous looking. 
                        This arrangement of scrap metal began when the shitty Dockside building was first proposed. The developer, Peter DePaul and the DePaul Group, was fighting to build Dockside by Piers 9 and 11 (now Race Street Pier). A firestorm of local residents and politicians forced it down to the much shittier location it ended up in, pissing off the developer. Then, once the move was confirmed, OTHER local residents and politicians forced changes in the design. As a compromise, DePaul set the building further back on Fuckface Pier and then created a small public park space in front. DePaul then assumed that the park was enough to satisfy the Percent-for-Shit requirement.
                       Construction began and the Redevelopment Authority started asking about public art. The park would not qualify and DePaul would have to drop an extra $500,000 on some government-mandated piece of fuck. After being bullied into moving their (ugly) building down to Pier 30 AND being forced to change their design once it got there, the DePaul Group had enough of this shit. They said, "Fuck the Percent-for-Art program", and attempted to be the largest project ever to be exempt since the requirement's start in 1959.
                       Since they had already started construction, it was too late to apply for an exemption. DePaul basically just said, "Fuck y'all" and went about their business with the assumption that they just wouldn't deal with it further. In the meantime, the RDA had already commissioned famous Polish artist Magdelena Abakanowicz to create those ugly ass fish you see in the picture above. Once word got out that DePaul was going to forego the Percent-for-Fart shit, backlash started coming from all sides.. especially since they accepted $6 million of government funds to reinforce the pier.
                        As usual, the press blew it out of proportion and implied that the Percent-for-Art program would end forever if DePaul got his way. Petitions swirled all over the city and internet claiming a "Percent-for-Art Crisis!!!" Mayor Street and Councilman DiCicco got their dirty asses involved, but DePaul stood strong, like he was the Rosa Parks of developers who've had enough of the bullshit. Eventually, city Commerce Director James J. Cuorato somehow convinced them to put the silvery shitfish up. The sculptures were installed in May, 2003.

Yay, fish... sorta.

                              Once installed, everyone went apeshit over them, especially because a somewhat famous artist was involved. After all, Abakanowicz's other work around the world is great. Most people just pretended that this piece was just as good as her other stuff. Even Peter DePaul pretended that he liked Open Air Aquarium. After a couple of years went by, everyone just got used to them, sort of like when you get used to an old empty lot or abandoned building. You hate that its there, but you've come to accept it.
                             Then, a hero came. In November 2005, one of the shitfish went missing! Someone had actually stolen one and sold it for scrap. Many assumed it was just a desperate thief, but I think it was a person who hated the sculptures so much that they went into a fit of rage and tried to take them down one by one, but gave up after dumping the first one into the river. To bad they couldn't finish the job. 
                            Don't get me wrong here folks... I love the Percent-for-Art requirement. The thing is, developers have a hard enough time trying to get shit built in this city. If the requirement gets to a point where the developer's bottom line gets threatened, it will discourage others to build. The Percent-for-Art requirement has brought a lot of wonderful things to this city, so it should stay alive, but I'm just saying: Let's not overdo it. Also, elephant scrotum.