Photo courtesy of Sculpture Milwaukee
Tony Tasset’s Blob Monster
Turns out, walking the streets of Downtown Milwaukee on a late Friday afternoon in August during a pandemic, is a fairly solitary act. On any given morning after Labor Day I’m sure Milwaukee’s Downtown will buzz with a semblance of the vitality it’s had in years past, but for now, road workers in orange vests outnumber those in suits, the gurgle of Lake Michigan rises above the whir of traffic, and art enthusiasts are the unlikely beneficiaries of the temporary calm.
In the midst of a climate which left most institutions reeling and happy enough just to get arrow decals on the floor and doors open again, Sculpture Milwaukee has somehow mounted its fourth-annual program of sculpture in the urban landscape along Milwaukee Avenue, along with maps, wayfinding and full audio guides. I had been waiting for the inevitable press release mentioning a postponement, but rather, right on schedule arrived a new batch of sculptural surprises along the sidewalks and breezeways on Wisconsin Avenue, as well as a couple in the Third Ward. Several select holdovers from last year’s crop are still around, notably Roxy Paine’s chromed tree and Carlos Rolón’s colorful makeover of the cubed lobby of the Chase Bank building. But there are plenty of new works to make walking the seven-block loop well worth the effort.
The most intriguing moment occurs on the north side of East Wisconsin Avenue where Julian Opie’s Natalie Walking stands, or, better, strolls in place, a block or two from Alex Katz’s Park Avenue Departure. Both artists are canonical names known better for their two-dimensional work than their sculpture. Katz is kind of a painter’s painter, and a darling, while Opie is often considered a graphic designer masquerading as a painter. So it may not be completely surprising that Opie’s kinetic sculpture of a walking girl is more effective in this setting than Katz’s two-sided, double-backed, portrait plinth of an anonymous woman. Katz’s painting-as-sculpture is more sensitively handled, but also more elusive in the particularly busy viewshed than the more demonstrative and illuminated Opie.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Confrontational Sensational
On the south side of the street, the inclusion of Tony Tasset’s Blob Monster and Jim Dine’s Jim’s Head with Branches reflects a brilliant and necessary curatorial tightrope act. Both works are confrontational and sensational enough to arrest the average uncommitted pedestrian, but materially unique and sophisticated enough to excite dedicated, map-carrying geeks. Dine’s large bronze bust of himself is a textural and tactile take on an essentially classical model, while Tasset’s motley, colorful, fiberglass monster looks to postmodern referents from film, television, and comics. Dine’s work is analytical, Tasset’s synthetic; Dine’s looks inward, Tasset’s outward. The two works engage in a meaty dialogue across avenues about the nature of figuration and sources of content in post-war art.
Nearby, another take on figurative sculpture by Thomas J. Price incorporates the institutional traditions of public statuary to its advantage. His Within the Folds (Dialogue 1) offers a portrait of a contemporary African American man cast in bronze, slightly larger than life-size, and perched on a terrace above sidewalk-level to intensify the impress of the otherwise unremarkable figure. Encountering the work organically is truly jarring, as it challenges our visual assumptions and biases about monumentality, which are usually linked to historic, white, political figures. If you imagined for a moment that you don’t possess such biases, go have a look and be surprised.
A monument of a different type by local notable Paul Druecke lies partially submerged in the earth over in the Third Ward. His counterfeit historical marker Shoreline Repast offers an alternative account of the concept of Lake Michigan. It calls into question the politics of conferring meaning on a place, en route to becoming a site. Two blocks away, Paula Crown examines, or revels in, what seems to be a universal love of scaled-up mundane objects. The 8-foot high facsimile of what’s become the official beer pong red Solo cup is swarmed by awaiting selfie takers each time I encounter it. Jokester as it’s titled, is a fetching enough object, but its appeal is a bold reminder that it’s still nouns rather than verbs, metonyms rather than metaphors, that excites most of us. The curators of Sculpture Milwaukee are as aware of this as anyone–Crown’s work after all is the only one residing between two public watering holes–and continue to split the difference between populist and refined tastes with aplomb. Subtle visual dialogues such as this Druecke and Crown example set up along the circuit encourage grander discussions about art. It’s a commendable balancing act; just the thought of trying to achieve this year after year makes me sweat. So here’s to another job well done.
To read more visual arts articles, click here.
To read more articles by Shane McAdams, click here.
