Planned for 2012, Jeff Koons’ life-sized replica of a motorized train will be suspended from a construction crane at the entrance of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (Christopher Knight, LA Times, here)
The price tag for “Train” is $25 million.
I’d assume that’s a ballpark guesstimate, because engineering and
fabrication costs have a way of evolving over time. The
steel-and-aluminum “Train” is a 70-foot replica of a 1943 Baldwin
2900-series steam locomotive, and the aim is to suspend it vertically
from an actual 161-foot-tall construction crane. The wheels will
rotate, smoke will puff from the smokestack and the whistle will blow,
all at as-yet-unspecified intervals.
At LACMA’s blog Unframed, John Bowsher, director of special art
installations, was quoted in October describing the design-process as
“reverse-engineering.” An actual 1943 machine is being digitally
scanned, piece by piece, so that the new parts then can be fabricated
and assembled to create a shiny doppelgänger.
In an earthquake zone, the hubris of the project is notable, but if any artist can make it work, it’s Koons. Unlike Damien Hirst, whose shark continues to rot in its tank, sagging against its supports despite interventions, Koons places a premium on fabrication exactitude.
Despite its size, Train is reduced to an absurdity. If constructed, it will steam to no purpose in the heart of car culture. That’s what art continues to say about trains, that they are an echo of an echo, a memory to cling to in sentimental song, the ultimate road not taken.
Makes sense that American artists would see it this way, but European? Christoph Draeger is Swiss. We’re a long way from Sleeping Car Murder.
Glenn Rudolph (and here)
Eirik Johnson: Scrapped train, Arlington, Washington
Trains are the future. Art needs to keep up. Cars need to go
It makes me sad as an artist when I see such huge financial resources–in this case $25Million-squandered so foolishly. With so many in need on our planet I just wonder what people are thinking sometimes. Its just crazy to make ugly crap like this and call it art. If they want to speak to the arguments pro/against types of transportation let them join their fellow spenders in congress and get the hell out of the art community.