Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Searchlight Sculptures over Tompkins Square Park

While looking up articles on the late Tony Rosenthal, the sculptor of the revolving black cube on Astor Place, I came across a piece on Frosty Myers. I'm familiar with the work of Myers, particularly The Wall on Houston and Broadway, though I didn't know about the following, via an article from the December 2006 Art in America:

Myers is also the author of temporal "Searchlight Sculptures," nighttime installations of carbon-arc searchlights that were sited at the four corners of Tompkins Square Park in the East Village in 1966, in Union Square in 1969, in a park in Fort Worth in 1979, and elsewhere. The beams tent upward to join at an apex in the manner of a vast pyramid. In 1966, using laser equipment made available by a trade sales representative, Myers projected a red laser beam from his studio on Park Avenue South to the outside of Max's Kansas City several blocks away, where a mirror redirected the beam the length of the restaurant so that it completed its trajectory through the smoky din of the art-world watering hole, concluding at the far wall of Max's storied back room.


Here's a shot of the "Searchlight Sculpture" in Tompkins Square Park.

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