I am an artiste!
So the town of Livermore, California hired an artist to make a mosaic mural featuring portraits and names of great figures in science, art and history. Unfortunately, $40,000 doesn’t buy you correct spelling these days. The mural celebrates Eistein, [Vincent] Van Gough, Michaelangelo, and [Paul] Guagan. and more. The town had voted to pay her another $6000 plus expenses to fly her back to fix it (state law prohibits modifying public art without the artist’s consent.) But now she’s coppin’ a ‘tude.
The artist who created the now-infamous Livermore library mosaic that contains 11 misspellings says she no longer wants to fix it because of the “nasty messages from people who don’t understand art.”
Because if you truly understood art, you’d just love to have your town library covered with misspellings.
Maria Alquilar, who complained that her name, too, was often misspelled
Ah, so there was a revenge motivation.
“My career in public art is over,” said the artist.
You got that right.
The artist said the names were spelled correctly on her sketches, but she got them wrong as she was doing the piece. She admits noticing “Einstein” was misspelled but choosing to go forward anyway. “I just wasn’t that concerned,” she said. “None of us are particularly good spellers anymore because of computers. When you are in a studio full of clay, you don’t give it much thought.
“I’m a militant apathetic — I don’t care, and neither should you.”
“When you look at Michelangelo’s David, do you point out that one (testicle) is lower than the other?”
“I cut all my life drawing classes in school.”
The city debated leaving the misspelled names and creating a game where visitors try to find them — an idea that angered Alquilar. “Can you imagine them suggesting that a work of art be used as a game?” she asked. “It is outrageous.”
Making the best of a bad situation with a potentially educational game: outrage. Pocketing $40,000 of taxpayer money for a project you couldn’t be arsed to get right: art!
"Can you imagine them suggesting that a work of art be used as a game?”
...and that, right there, is what's wrong with very, very much of the "serious art" of today.
Posted by Mris on October 11 2004 17:02
Exactly my thoughts--spelling the words wrong on purpose, as some kind of statement, might be defensible, though annoying and juvenile; just plain screwing up is forgivable; not wanting to fix it, less so...but taking oneself that seriously? Eeesh.
Not sure what Blake's theology has to do with it, either--except that he too was a creative speller.
And I think most people would point it out if Michelangelo's David had THREE testicles!
LOL--thanks, Zed!
Posted by Geoff on October 12 2004 19:41
Oh no. OH NO. I mean, as if the woman weren't obviously crazy to begin with, is she so unaware of human anatomy that she doesn't realize that all sets of testicles are asymmetrical?
And having seen pictures of this woman's mural, I blame the city government. There's expressionistic, and then there's just amateurish. She definitely falls into the latter camp.
Posted by vjb2 on October 16 2004 00:24
=v= It just figures that the Chronicle depicts this as having "pitted art advocates against language purists." It takes a "purist" to want Einstein's name spelled correctly? Well, if you work in a building with a bronze plaque on it, touting your "jounalism," then yeah, I guess you'd think that's a little picky.
I'm also intrigued that the word "testicle" is in parentheses instead of brackets. What does that mean? Should I consult a bunch of style guides? Or did the artiste perhaps say "testakul?"
Posted by Jym on October 18 2004 14:57