Category: visual

The fiberglass animal craze is spreading to cities all over America. Latest to catch it is San Jose, which proposes to deploy 1,000 fiberglass bulls throughout Silicon Valley. At least the title of the project acknowledges the idea’s commercial underpinnings: “Silicon Valley Stampede: Home of the Bull Market.” – San Jose Mercury News

Critics have always savaged American Impressionism for being second-rate and sentimental. But what they’re really upset about is that “American painters failed to measure up to the French genius of Claude Monet. This is like damning all golfers for not being Tiger Woods.” – Hartford Courant

“Art means less to people than it used to. Hype means so much more. People go to museums to be entertained, not to be moved. We no longer believe in putting intellectual effort into our museum experiences. We demand them on a plate. Prefabricated. Fast. These are conditions in which grandeur and largeness play better than intimacy and compactness. In our national museum-going, we have regressed to the stage where we like things to be written out in capitals.” – The Sunday Times (UK)

Los Angeles opened the last part of its mass transit rail system this week. “A city that recognizes the power and value of cosmopolitanism would sanctify the social spaces in which it’s fostered. Alas, L.A. chose not to. Metro Rail’s aesthetic mediocrity was assured at the start, when a bureaucratic decision was made that an engineering firm, not an architect, would design the far-flung system. Designing meaningful civic spaces is an architect’s job, not an engineer’s.” – Los Angeles Times

LA’s subway is best known for its $6.1-billion price tag, scandalous mismanagement and ineffectiveness as a transportation network. But the new stations also reveal a profound misunderstanding of Los Angeles’ civic identity. Built at a cost of $63 million to $82 million each, the stations are essentially decorated sheds, massive concrete boxes where architecture and art are used to create a thin veneer of fantasy. – Los Angeles Times

Australian curators are seeking a ban of exports of aboriginal art from the country. Next week there’s an important auction of about 1000 aboriginal works of art. “Alarmed by the number of early Aboriginal paintings being sold to overseas collectors, the curators and other critics were successful last year in having changes made to the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act. Now, an export permit must be obtained for Aboriginal art works more than 20 years old and valued at $10,000 or more.” – Sydney Morning Herald

Frank Gehry’s proposed design for a new bridge in Chicago has run head-on into the city’s most prominent architecture critic – Mayor Daley. “I’ve designed 10 new ones since I heard he doesn’t like it,” Gehry says. “The bridge flap is the latest example of Daley’s involvement in aesthetic issues that other mayors typically delegate to aides. Daley personally reviews major building projects, and his passion for beautification has resulted in a string of initiatives – fountains, flowers, trees and median planter boxes – that make both the city and the mayor look good.” – Chicago Tribune

“Paul Allen, 47, is the third or fourth richest man on the planet, having earned something close to $30 billion by co-founding Microsoft Corp., and his zeal for greenbacks is matched only by his affection for the artifacts and totems of pop history. So when he decides to give the public a peek at his stash, he’s not going to build a shed.” So we get the Experience Music Project. – Washington Post

Artist Andy Goldsworthy brought 13 five-foot-round snowballs to London to melt in the heat of the longest day of the year. So how will Londoners confront the balls? Will they choose to stand back and admire, or stage impromptu summer snowball fights before a day at school or the office? – London Evening Standard

— but no one will rank it with his best work. It has been described as the architect’s rendering of one of the guitars Hendrix regularly smashed in performance, but it looks more like a pile of melted metal. – Boston Herald

• “A $240 million monument built by a baby boomer with the means to make his adolescent dreams come true.” – Orange County Register (AP)