Before and after his tours in Vietnam, my Uncle Gary attended Wichita State University. After a few new sculptures arrived on campus, he invited the family on a tour. My mother was excited because there were several works of art on the grounds, as well as in the Ulrich Museum, she’d not seen. I was excited because this meant I was going to get to see that horse up close.
I could not have been more disappointed. When Ralphie, from A Christmas Story, realized the secret message he’d waited anxiously to decode was “just a crummy commercial,” I finally had a way to describe the utter disgust I felt when I got close enough to that horse to realize just how fantastic it wasn’t.
I thought it had been constructed out of pure light and some newly-fangled material made by an insane but kindly scientist. It was instead made out of something immediately recognizable to me: a car part.
As a child, specifically the child and grandchild of Mopar fanatics, cars ruled my world and I was none too happy about it. They were always breaking down, keeping us from getting to the park or to grandma's, and making my dad say things we were not allowed to repeat whenever he opened the hood or, worse, bonked his head on it.
Cars were not always getting fixed because there wasn’t a lot of money for parts, so sometimes they sat around making my parents look out the window with a mix of sadness and contempt. Cars had holes in the floor that had to be patched and re-patched so exhaust wouldn’t seep in. They caused my parents to fight, stunk to high heaven inside and out, and somehow never managed to get us kids to the A&W drive-in but once a year.
Article comments
1 - Elaine
Love love love the horse!!
2 - Kevin Freitas
What I find interesting in your article Diana, is the contrast between your first impression, "I was utterly fascinated by what appeared to be a contrast of many smooth, intensely reflective surfaces and jagged lines that absorbed light. It was very much as if it might just run away in a flurry of magic" and your subsequent "disappointment" in seeing the sculpture up close. It seems to me, this particular sculpture, has successfully accomplished what any good piece of art should do, that is, stir the imagination. Other than a long history of artists "playing" with that fine line between what you see and what you feel when looking at art, the materials used in making it, either enhance the artist's intent or blur the perception (from a spectator's point of view) its physical reality or presence. It is not, for the most part, a switch & bait as you call it.
I probably wouldn't classify the chromed bumper horse as "found art" either - the difference is that the artist is not making do with what he found per say, but is intentionally looking for chromed bumpers to make the sculpture, they (the bumpers) are not things he found lying in the street. When I think of found art, I think of the greatest master of this genre, Marcel Duchamp or someone like Kurt Schwitters and his collages, which collage is, at its most basic form "found."
3 - Erin
I will always love the "bumper ponies" as we affectionately call them 'round here. As well as the goats, the pig, the giraffe (nicely placed inside a bank, right next to a tall potted tree), and the fighting bulls. I've always loved the smooth, shiny surfaces and to this day I still get up close to peek inside where there are gaps between the welded pieces.
In another art direction-aesthetic puzzles-, Kearney, still alive, is aware that these bumper creations are rusting from the inside out, the ones placed outside that is. He has said there is no way to repair them (since car parts were not manufactured originally to be art parts....art parts...hehe...I digress) and they'll have to simply be taken off display and done away with.
Are we really okay with that? Don't ask Diana, she'll attend the funerals ;) but really, should we let him let his artwork be destroyed?
4 - Teri Centner
Nice photo of the Heidelberg statue! ;-)