Today is removing day at Cooper Union for the Ai Weiwei installation ... part of a citywide project in collaboration with the Public Art Fund titled "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors." (Thanks to EVG reader Riian Kant-McCormick for this photo!)
The installation of the installations started in early October ... ahead of the official debut on Oct. 12. Yesterday marked the last day for the "Fences" project. Around here, installations were also on view at 48 E. Seventh St., 189 Chrystie St., 248 Bowery and the Essex Street Market.
According to The New York Times, "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors" is "a reflection on the growing hostility toward immigrants and the rise of nationalism throughout the world."
The installation was commissioned by the Public Art Fund in celebration of its 40th anniversary.
Good riddance. Glad to no longer be neighbors with this so-called piece of art.
ReplyDeleteI have say unless you were looking for these "fence" pieces they were pretty invisible except for the one in WSP. What the artist missed in my opinion is the "invisible fences" which come with gentrification of city or neighborhood. Apartments which were once affordable are no longer because a corporate Realestate company now own them. These fences force people from their often long time homes. Perhaps Ai Weiwei will address that idea next time however it will way too late.
ReplyDeleteA great example of "to those who have, more will be given". Some of Ai Weiwei's art is really interesting. Other pieces, like this, are crap. The test is simple: "If I didn't know this was made by a famous artist, would I think this piece is schlock"? This project fails that test.
ReplyDeleteWaste of money.
ReplyDeleteWish I had so much money, it didnt affect me
financially to just throw it away.
More whining about gentrification.
ReplyDeleteGentrification: the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste.
And yet the same people who gripe about gentrification tomorrow will be thrusting their fists in the air with indignation over the vanishing the middle class.
Forrest Gump to the courtesy phone, please.
Ai Weiwei hasnt done anything "good" since being detained by the Mainlanders. He has continued to work in a "political" way, but only when these so-called "politics" have little if nothing to do with the Chinese State. Either he is scared, a fraud, or a curious mix of both.
ReplyDeleteThis was probably the murkiest public art project I've ever seen. Didn't notice virtually any of the "fences" because...well, FENCING.
ReplyDeleteThe banners might've been cool but their inaccessibility from being in the air with barely any captioning or explanation was horribly tone-deaf.
The digital prints displayed on the sides of kiosks were the only ones I actually saw firsthand and liked...but even those were presented murky, getting clogged by anything surrounding them.
Bring back Christo and The Gates, for Buddha's sake!
I love art installations but I didn't get this one at all. New Yorkers live with fences and grates and scaffolding and bars on windows every day so I barely noticed anything. Was there a point being made about immigration? What was it? This didn't make me feel anything.
ReplyDeleteI have just completed my first public art project. I call it, “Long White Lines On Black Asphalt” and you can see it now on almost every street in the city. Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteThis city has already had fenced off art pieces, except with bollards and green plywood surrounding hyper-development.
ReplyDeleteThe real impact Weewee will have on this city from his uninteresting public exhibition is that it's going to give the city and any other private organization excuse to drop future installations or incorporate events of promotions approved in any public space,and has shown in Wash Square and Flushing Meadows (I bet nobody knew that there was fencing placed around the legendary world's fair globe) in any park they want.
That was art ?
ReplyDeleteWho knew.
Looked like a security window gate.
"And yet the same people who gripe about gentrification tomorrow will be thrusting their fists in the air with indignation over the vanishing the middle class."
ReplyDeleteTalk about vague... how is the middle class defined in NYC? My definition will most likely be quite different than yours. The same with "gentrification" what of the markers for that? Most people consider when things get "upscaled" it and indication that property or a business has changed hands and those hands reach into much deeper pockets. When a city changes zoning laws to accommodate developers who replace established housing for housing which is only obtainable but people in a much higher tax bracket that is an act of gentrification. When readers of EV Grieve critique an internationally know artist on their work that is not gentrification but perhaps the complete opposite.
After reading all the negative comments I would like to find some redeeming factor in this project, but I can't.
ReplyDeleteYou know the real stupid thing about this exhibition besides the art, is that the city decided to do a borough wide outdoor exhibition in the winter instead of the spring.
ReplyDeleteI think the only one that got any attention was the obvious one in Washington Square. And that was in the eye of this beholder, a pile of shit