10:02 on 2013/01/29 Reply  

• Bill Binns 11:17 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  It is municipal insanity to even be contemplating spending who knows how many hundreds of thousands (or millions?) of dollars to move a 50 year old chunk of aluminum from one place to another when were sitting in the middle of not crumbling but crumbled infrastructure. Leave it where it is. It may someday stand as a marker to the city that used to be here.

• Kate 12:08 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  Here, have a Prozac.

• Bill Binns 12:20 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  Thanks but I prefer powerful sedatives like Narcozep or Dipravan to calm me after reading the local news of the day.

• mdblog 13:05 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  Kate, that was mean.

• William 13:23 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  I think it was overdue. I find the over-used hyperbole in the comments on this blog tiresome, not to mention the self-proclaimed expert opinions.

• No\Deli 13:28 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  I liked Bill’s remark. I thought it was poetical.

• qatzelok 14:12 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  This is a non-news story. The statue looks great where it is, and it would be cheaper to commission a new oversized piece of origami made of welded-metal in situ (on site). Modern sculpture is easy and cheap to create. Why pretend this thing is some kind of fragile gift from a skilled craftsman? It’s just a bland industrial object that happens to look great illuminated on a pedestal by the river.

• Kate 18:57 on 2013/01/29 Permalink

  Here, have a Prozac, qatzelok.

  Man is a wonderful work by a significant artist of the 20th century. What public art piece – anywhere – do you approve of?

• C_Erb 02:30 on 2013/01/30 Permalink

  Was anyone with any power to move the statue actually seriously considering doing so or was this just the media going back and forth on it enough that it started to seem like something that was going to happen?

• qatzelok 07:05 on 2013/01/30 Permalink

  @ Kate: “What public art piece – anywhere – do you approve of?”

  Did I say I didn’t approve of this piece? No. I just said that it’s cheap and easy to design and build this kind of non-representational object.

• Kate 08:51 on 2013/01/30 Permalink

  C_Erb, François Cardinal refers in his Wednesday column to le débat public so I suppose somebody does. But he gives good reasons in this column why there’s no categorical reason to move the work, and there’s also some stuff about its historical background.

  Cardinal is really into it – he has a second piece in La Presse today on the subject as well. Apparently one Alexandre Taillefer, presumably with some amount of influence, is pushing the city to move the piece, but Cardinal thinks not. And because it’s in the city’s biggest paper it does become a subject of debate.

• jeather 10:42 on 2013/01/30 Permalink

  Do you dislike all non-representational art?

• Ian 11:00 on 2013/01/30 Permalink

  Qatzi, just because you don’t appreciate this kind of art doesn’t diminish its relevance or what an honour it was for Montreal to have one of Calder’s pieces for Expo67 given his international stature.

  Comment réaliser l’art?

  Des masses, des directions, des espaces limités dans le grand espace, l’univers. Des masses différentes, légères, lourds, moyennes,—indiquées par des variations de grandeur ou de couleur—des directions—vecteurs représentant vitesses, vélocités, accélérations, forces, etc. . . .—ces directions faisant entre elles des angles significatifs, et des sens, définissant ensemble une grande résultante ou plusieurs.

  Des espaces, des volumes, suggérés par les moindres moyens opposés à leur masse, ou même les contenant, juxtaposés, percés par des vecteurs, traversés par des vitesses.

  Rien de tout ça fixe.

  Chaque élément pouvant bouger, remuer, osciller, aller et venir dans ses relations avec les autres éléments de son univers.

  Que ce soit, non seulement un instant “momentané”, mais une loi physique de variation
  entre les événements de la vie.

  Pas d’extrations,

  Des abstractions

  Des abstractions qui ne ressemblent à rien de la vie, sauf par leur manière de réagir.

  “Comment réaliser l’art?” par Alexander Calder, Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, no. 1 (1932)

  For further reading, I suggest http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Calder …you will note that the two pieces used to illustrate Calder’s ouevre are both in Montreal.

• qatzelok 20:37 on 2013/01/30 Permalink

  Ian, all the Art History courses I have triumphed in have not blinded me to the fact that it’s really easy to “do” non-representational art. Sometimes I come across piles of garbage that evoke more than the “Man” sculpture. I’m not afraid of being accused of being a rube for noticing the nakedness of the Elite’s obsession with novelty.

• Kate 12:49 on 2013/01/31 Permalink

  it’s really easy to “do” non-representational art

  Let’s see some of yours.

  Good nonrepresentational art is wickedly difficult. Practice and study can teach anyone to model a human figure or other natural form. Going beyond that to create an object that evokes feeling and response but isn’t a copy of something already in the world is what takes real depth, craft and creativity.

• qatzelok 14:25 on 2013/01/31 Permalink

  Anyone can make a lovely inukshuk. And they’re sort of representational. Welding metal sheets into a giant shape is also really easy. What’s hard is getting the money and connections to get paid for it. If you read his bio, Sandy Calder was well connected by way of his mother, and that’s why his metal shapes decorates our island. Modern art was a scam to make New York look like it had culture, and not just mafia money.

• Philippe 10:40 on 2013/02/01 Permalink

  Practice and study can teach anyone to model a human figure or other natural form.

  Actually, I believe being able to realistically model the human figure is beyond the reach of most. I was once told by a Fine Arts graduate that such is not only looked down upon in most Fine Arts departments, the techniques and training for it are no longer widely available.

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