Arts patron and irrepressible character Max Gurvich died at home in Seattle at age 94. (Seattle Times obit here.)
Board member and donor (with his wife Helen) to a variety of Seattle arts groups, including the Seattle Art Museum, the Henry Gallery and Cornish College of the Arts, Gurvich’s lasting legacy might be a hideous pair of woven, window-blind style metal sculptures that rise 22-feet out of the water at the west end of the Evergreen Point Bridge, which connects Seattle to its Eastside suburbs.
I wrote a story for the PI when they were installed in 2002. Here’s a recap:
Seattle’s rules for who can place what art in what part of the public sphere are rigorous, and yet Gurvich triumphed over all that to install his creations in a prominent spot, where 130,000 cars drive by them each day.
Here’s the good part: He didn’t say he was the artist to anybody who needed to approve the placement. Instead, he spent a year getting a permit from the Department of Transportation and the go-ahead from the majority of nine community clubs and six cities on Lake Washington.
They didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell.
Tom Lentz, Department of Transportation assistant regional manager for maintenance and traffic:
I thought Max was the
patron, and he had an artist working with him. I guess I should have
asked, but I’m an engineer. I looked into the engineering issues.
Rarely do people offer to give us something. I found it refreshing. Max
got support from the city’s art commission, and the state’s, too.
Actually, he didn’t. The state, King County and Seattle arts
commissions all said they had nothing to do with it.
When Lentz went back to his files to figure out what happened, he found that the DOT contacted both city and state arts commissions, and was told by
each it wasn’t their baby. Not on city property, said the city. Not
through our funding sources, said the state.
The
sculptures, titled Aurora Borealis, look like early ’60s room dividers from a suburban den
joined to make inverted pyramids. Seven years after their installation, their kitsch exuberance has run its course.
Seattle curator Vicki Halper:
You have to hand it to him. He did it all. He should have been
stopped, but he did it all.
Weird. Being somewhat of a newcomer to Seattle, I always thought those things were out-of-this-world weather stations; or a cutting edge solar power solution left behind from 1989.
Seconded! In addition to his “work” next to I-520, let’s get rid of the “sculpture” on the outside of the Office Depot in Ballard.
[crossing fingers…]
HA! Bond, I couldn’t agree more that they do resemble some kind of bizarre and overly colourful science project.
My attitude towards them is more ambivalent, but I wish they were as cool as that.
.Thanks God…those sculptures are an eyesore.When I moved to seattle in 93, and I saw those ugly’s right on the lake..I told myself ” whoaa! aren’t those ugly’s…uglies…yes uglies
It always amazes me how people with absolutely no training as artists think that it’s so easy to do and they go ahead and make these ugly pieces of junk. 10 years ago someone I know said, “why should I commission you, I’ll make it myself and save myself some money.” I’m still waiting to see the piece and it’ll probably never get made.
So you don’t appreciate the late Mr Gurvitch’s aesthetics? I guess that entitles you to behave like clueless boors who indulge in an orgy of schadenfreude by publicly celebrating his demise with such callous insensitivity to his family, friends, and community.
If you don’t like his work, don’t look at it..those who love it, will double their time enjoying his art…
Yr reasoning works for abortion, Vicci, but for sculptures that are unavoidable in public, not so much.
It always amazes me how people with mutiple art degrees, and LOTS of “training” (do they wear training pants while the do this?) are equally able to make ugly pieces of junk.
In fact, it always amazes me when something I am positive is an ugly piece of junk is determined to be great art by somebody else, be they developer, or art critic.
In other words, there is no accounting for taste.
Personally, I found ol’ Max mildly amusing, but no match for his lovely wife, who is a lot more fun. For years I labored under the illusion that these pieces were actually made by a “real” artist, and now that I know Max did them, it changes absolutely nothing about them in my opinion- they are still pretty uninteresting, and still pretty indistinguishable from artworks made by several nationally famous MFA holders of my acquaintance.
But then, what do I know- my own work has been declared the worst public art in Seattle, which means Max was a better artist than I am- Go Max!, wherever you are.
In rereading my last post, (I hate not being able to edit these posts)
I find myself sounding less appreciative of Max than I actually am.
No, I still dont particularly like these pieces- but Max, himself, was a great supporter of the arts, and consistently put his money where his mouth was, and I appreciated that.
I can think of a lot of artists who were a lot LESS generous with their time, money, and enthusiasm, whose work is prominently featured in public, with no outcry against removing it.
Frankly, I think calling for the removal of art, because-
A- you dont like it
and
B- the artist has died and is no longer around to defend it
is kind of strange and macabre. When they came for the Gurvich sculptures, you were silent, because you werent a Gurvich….
Ries. There has to be a pull date on failure. Even the Republicans were not allowed to drag us into their darks within a dark forever. Just because Max conned the system to get his work on view doesn’t mean we have to look at it any longer. Who will deliver us from these piles of junk? Nobody. At least we get to say something, every now and again.
Regina, when you get 99% of the popular vote, then I will concede that your opinion of “failure” would allow destruction of art. Not justify it, but allow it.
Until then, however, its just that- your opinion.
As I said, on this particular piece, we may agree that its not that great- although “failure” I would tend to reserve for things like Chihuly’s plastic soda bottle bridge…
I am adamant, however, in defending unpopular art- because I just dont believe that popularity means much of anything when it comes to art. Again and again, thru out history, unpopular failures have come to be appreciated later. Esteemed critics not dissimilar to yourself, a hundred years ago, dissed Duchamp for “obvious” reasons. Not fools, not ignoramuses, but people who took awhile to see the new train coming.
So, on basic principle, I think its wrong and evil to call for the removal of art, based on one woman’s opinion of failure. No matter how wise and perceptive that woman may be.
I have my list of my least favorite pieces, here and around the world. But railing against them, muttering as I pass by, creatively abusing them at parties, is so much more satisfying than destruction.
I feel sadness seeing the pictures of the statues of Lenin or Saddam being destroyed, as well- the sculpture is not the man. The giant swords, surrounded by helmets of soldiers, in Tehran, are great pieces of art that tell a story of a time that may never be repeated- a bad time, in many ways, but a history in art that is valuable.
Your same logic- that, according to the prevailing mores of the society, the art was a “failure” is why the Buddhas at Bamyan were destroyed, why all kinds of unfashionable art and architecture has been lost over the ages.
I may not be as cute as the Lorax, but I speak for art, even art I hate.
Ries. Did I say we should melt down what Max made us for scrap? No. But its time in the public sphere should be up. Let his family plant these sculptures on their lawn. Remember he faked out the public progress. And relax. Nobody’s going to do a thing. Removal would require action and maybe $. It’s easier to leave well enough alone. This being Seattle, that’s what will happen.
This is fascinating. What an amazing story!
To me these sculptures look like they’d just as well dot the landscape of former East Berlin. Some kind of watchtower? ?
This is priceless: “Yr reasoning works for abortion, Vicci, but for sculptures that are unavoidable in public, not so much.”
Ries, Hi!, I’ve never met you, but I drive by your house often, on the way to my parents’: I think Regina’s not alone in wanting these beasties put to rest, NOT because she doesn’t like them (because there are far worse art turds in Seattle that would cost a lot less to remove) but because Mr. Max had NO RIGHT to put them there in the first place! The story of these sculptures is valuable in itself and it will live on in documentation.
Looked at in another way, this is actually very inspiring: Look at what you can get done, without ever asking! Yeah, Seattle!
One more thing! Responding to Ries’s “I feel sadness seeing the pictures of the statues of Lenin or Saddam being destroyed, as well- the sculpture is not the man.” I heartily disagree. In the oppressed locations inhabited by life-sized sculptures of the oppressors, the sculpture is definitely the man. It ceases to be the man only when moved out of context; a move that can only be physical, not conceptual. If the sculpture is regarded as something valuable in itself, then certainly more valuable is what we could call the time-based art that takes place when these sculptures are effectively overthrown by the populace.
Discuss, discuss, but please, for the love of God, someone pullleeeease get those things out of there…
I live in Ballard and when I first came to town, there was an amazing wooden manufacturing building on the corner of Leary & 14th. I thought it should be recycled into an art center.
Then it burned down. Why? I don’t know. I was out of town.
I learned the property belonged to Max Gurvich. That’s where the Office “Max” is with more bad Gurvich art – the reflector ribbons mentioned by Brian. It a big box building – the same ugly that is regularly being built – with no reflection of the authentically-Ballard historic building that came before.
I asked Max to build an art center on top of the Office Max. He was a successful businessman. He had worked with many nonprofits. He felt they were mostly beggers, unable to pay their rent. He wouldn’t have anything to do with the idea…
In 2003 Gurvich almost got one of those godawful sculptures of his placed at the intersection of Roy and Broadway on Capitol Hill, and in a completely disingenuous way. It would have replaced a street improvement paid for by the Capitol Hill community through the sanctioned (we thought) Neighborhood Planning process. The switcheroo was sniffed out and quashed, but it was a close one.
Readers yearning for more bad outdoor sculpture can see some at the corner of Denny & Fairview at the new Mirabella retirement development. Looks like a 1950’s cartoonist’s doodle of abstract art. So bad I almost rear-ended the car in front of me when I drove by this week.
I remember that. His sculptures are awful, but his approach to placing them made him a notable performance artist, zeroing in on the weaknesses of the public process.
Max was one of a kind, one of the kindest people I have ever met in my lifetime. Happy, positive and full of hope.
I will miss old max and especially his corny jokes.
Phil Thow
I like these sculptures -a lot- I think they look like sails in the wind it’s perfect for our Lake. all our three children look out for them when we approach the end of the bridge.
Kudos to Max for getting them there.
Max, in a nutshell.
– Nice
– Corny
– One liner jokes
– People person
– Cared about others
– Shrude
– Happy disposition
– Optimistic