If you’re a New York artist who seeks to score a public art commission in a park in Portland, Oregon, what comes to mind? Leaping fish, forests and forest stumps, mountains and/or a water feature? How about an emblem of a locked and loaded gray sky or maybe, if you don’t mind ripping off Chris Burden (proposed 1991) by way of a Jeff Koons train (proposed 2009), a full-scale fishing boat hanging off the side of a building?
If none of that appeals, you’re safe with a totem pole, even though the tribes that created the original models never lived that far south.
Kenny Scharf made a smashing success of the last option. Starting with a cliche isn’t a problem. It’s where you end up that matters.
Say it, no ideas but in things. Patterson, William Carlos Williams
In Jameson Park at the edge of the Pearl District, New York Pop Shop tribalism:
Detail, via
Detail, via:
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